


et in arcadia ego

by spikeface



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Great Gatsby Fusion, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-07 22:39:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10371330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spikeface/pseuds/spikeface
Summary: The Great Gatsby AU.  Pavel Chekov moves to Risa.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: This is a Chekov fic, and features non-fatal crushing of a character (not Chekov) by a vehicle. I wrote the bulk of it when the second movie came out, and perversely kept it as a kind of catharsis. This fic also features Khan, but I have used the name John Harrison instead. I know this doesn't really address the casting problem of the second movie, but it seemed slightly less incongruous, at least. I have further notes about it at the end of the fic.

_et qui spectavit vulnera vulnus habet._  
even the person who looks at wounds is wounded.  
— ovid, _ars amatoria_

"Having," Spock had once said, "is not so pleasing a thing as wanting."

Spock was never wrong about anything, even things that didn't seem to make sense at first.

But Chekov still wondered about it whenever he lay curled up in the nine square meters Starfleet had allotted him, when he had moved the latest pile of PADDS to the desk from the bed so he could huddle under the faded Terran covers he'd brought, even though New Vulcan sweltered with dry heat twenty hours a day.

Spock—he had learned from Lieutenant Uhura—had watched his mother plummet to the ground with his hand still reaching out for her while he was whisked away in a hole of light.

Chekov thought about Spock's mother, a red human splatter all over the red Vulcan earth. The planet had killed her, broken her wide open, and then they had disappeared. 

In its last moments Vulcan had sucked an entire people into its vast, unforgiving belly.

Chekov had never been anywhere like that.

\+ + +

Chekov had met Spock on New Vulcan, where every day more and more of the pitiful thousands of his people broke down from grief, from the weight of the planet they carried on their backs. When a Vulcan gave in, they roared—an abyssal scream like a sucking void of breath. They tore their hair out in chunks of black and green, dug their nails into their faces and dragged them down.

Worse were the Vulcans who dropped mid-sentence, eyelids sliding slowly over their irises, gentle as an Atellian butterfly. They had a room for them now, where they lay, each more serene than the last, awake but unresponsive, pushed to the point of involuntary meditation. The priests cared for them, bathed them and did not feed them and waited for them to arise, rail thin and guiltless from what amounted to a compulsive _kolinahr_.

Chekov lay awake nights, wondering which wantings were pleasurable. When Lieutenant Uhura left for the Neutral Zone two years after the founding of New Vulcan, Spock had watched the sky until the last thready trails of her shuttle had disappeared, squinting up against the suns. He stood closer to his father than any of the other Vulcans, attentive to the point of paranoia, as if his father too would fall away at any second. 

Three ponderous years on New Vulcan, and Chekov was still no closer to an answer. 

When he looked at himself in the mirror he could see that the question had settled into his face like famine, and knew from the way people talked to him that it was mistaken for curiosity. Chekov resolved himself to this misconception, to conversations with boring people who thought he wanted to know what they knew. 

He resigned himself, as he had with the stars and his family's forgiveness, to never having what he wanted.

Then he moved to Risa.

\+ + +

New Vulcan hadn't become home for Chekov any more than it had for the Vulcans, but he would miss it.

He had barely attempted the language. Uhura had tried to teach him, for several months worth of weekly meetings over steaming Vulcan tea. She served it in heavy handmade mugs the Ambassador had given her, curled her hands around hers and pulled her knees up to her chest, bright painted toes curled against the edge of her chair. Uhura's nine square meters were stuffed with souvenirs she had been collecting ever since the _Narada_. One whole wall was devoted to her earrings, which she had let Chekov pick over carefully after they finally gave up on Vulcan and decided on Russian instead.

His Vulcan accent was atrocious; he could see the Vulcans give themselves away in the contemptuous flare of their nostrils. After three years, Chekov got very good at reading minute facial tics.

He hated Vulcan food, missed meat, but he loved the planet's dual suns, the caves musical as glass, buildings slowly descending from the shadowed cliffs. With their planet lost, the Vulcans had retreated all the more strictly into ritual: never for foreign eyes, of course, but Chekov liked to watch the elaborate gestures of their greetings, Vulcans gathering at a distance to witness _kan-telan_ or _koon-ut-so'lik_ , draped in heavy dark robes despite the heat of the sun. 

Most of all he would miss Spock, who had been the first to demand he be allowed to attend meetings with Starfleet personnel of much higher rank. Stiff-necked, he'd dressed down the smarmy attaché who had been sent to tell Chekov that he was, in the language of Chekov's people, _regretful_ to inform him that his expertise was not necessary for this current endeavor.

No one had ever stood that tall for Chekov, become that pale with anger.

\+ + +

Spock called Chekov into his office where he stood in front of his desk with his arms clasped behind his back. "Mr. Chekov, you have been an extremely valuable officer for your entire commission on New Vulcan."

Chekov had accepted praise as his due all of his life. But from Spock, it was a surprise. 

"The colonization process has been incredibly difficult not least because of the diplomacy that is often called for in our relations with the Vulcan people. Your discretion and trustworthiness in this area have been outstanding."

Remembering the times he had looked away while a senator wept, Chekov nodded.

But Spock wasn't finished. "I would recommend you for any position you choose to accept for your next assignment, Mr. Chekov, but it would be my particular preference that you accept this one."

He drew up a file on his desk, but didn't open it.

"Before I continue, I must warn you that what I am about to share with you is completely confidential, and even if you do not accept, you are under oath as a Starfleet officer not to repeat anything you learn here through any medium. Violation of this agreement would result in a court martial for high treason. Do you understand? I will not disapprove if you choose to leave at this time."

"Yes, sir," Chekov replied cautiously, wary but eggshell thin with excitement. He wanted, as he had wanted since he was thirteen and ran away from home, to be part of something bigger. He had hoped New Vulcan would be it, had signed up to be part of Starfleet's planetside team while Vulcan had only just began to expand into the rest of the universe. "Tell me."

"Starfleet has recently suffered a very serious theft, the discovery of which would be extremely detrimental to our interplanetary standing. I believe that with your extreme intelligence you would be a valuable asset for the investigation, but all inquiries must be extremely circumspect."

"What was stolen, sir?"

Spock said blandly, "The Enterprise."

Chekov gaped. "How?"

"One of your tasks will be to find out. The ship disappeared from its dock, and the few smaller ships around it had been disabled. You'll be part of a small team on Risa. It is one of the most popular, anonymous, and least policed planets in the area, and initial telemetry reports indicated there was a forty three point two percent chance it would use the planet for a gravity assist."

Routes from San Francisco were already racing through his head, but he had no way of narrowing them down. "Do they have a full crew, sir?"

Irritation flickered across Spock's face. "They have told me nothing beyond the rudimentary facts, since I was tasked only with recruiting officers. None of the data has been entrusted to PADD, either. You will be briefed upon your arrival on Risa."

Chekov nodded, his head filled with coordinates, the possibility of finding the fleet's brightest jewel, the sector's finest thieves.

Spock broke him gently from his reverie: "I would also recommend Risa in that a particularly interesting colleague of mine lives there. I believe you would find it professionally gratifying to meet him. He left Starfleet service after the events of the _Narada_ , but supports many of its scientific and philanthropic endeavors. He is not a part of the mission, but I am certain he would be interested in your work."

Now thoroughly hooked, Risa began to orbit hazily around Chekov's head. He'd always dismissed it as a pleasure planet, a shore leave pit of distractions. Now it was a mystery, a promotion, Spock's _recommendation_ , a faceless war hero who wanted to meet him. 

"What's his name?"

\+ + +

Once, the Risans had worshiped invisible titans who wandered the earth, always out of sight beyond the next hill, their every tread an earthquake. The constant rumblings kept people and houses low, the water muddied, the plants nervous to take root. The world was covered in trees that bent and swayed with the winds, with more that crept into the chasms of the earth when they opened. Their poetry was always concerned with the end: the world knit back again, collapsed into one primordial wetness. _Jamaharon_.

Progress was at first incremental: they carved boats out of slender trees, mapped the many islands of their planet. They found stone, discovered the indomitable genius of baked clay—and then of concrete. They wrote down their poetry. They drove their first animal extinct through over hunting. They waged war.

Then they perfected weather control technology.

The water became so clear you could count fish a mile out to sea, glowed unearthly under the dual moonlight. The plants finally settled, springing up in jungles and huddling happily under the earth, in subterranean labyrinths where the earth had once split apart. The air cleared of dust and only steam was left, warm and oxygen rich like blood.

In the blink of a century, Risa had turned a port city into the sector's crown. Starfleet had landed nearly the minute the Prime Directive allowed, gleaming from their space ships and promising the riches that could be gained from showing Starfleet's finest a good time. The Risans moved out of the hills and bays, built up resorts on ground that would finally hold them. Now it was the officer's shore leave dreams come true, a planet of lambent pleasures, where even the plants reached out to touch you, to beckon you into the water turned shimmering by the numinous moons. 

Chekov had never been anywhere that welcomed foreigners.

\+ + +

Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu was waiting for him.

Like the rest of the galaxy, Chekov had known about him since the Narada: the ship's inexperienced and impossibly expert pilot, who had, like so much of the crew, left active service almost immediately after he'd saved a world. In the three days before Chekov left New Vulcan, he had found out that Sulu had left Starfleet nearly altogether, and chose to pursue a career as an athlete instead. He'd been told that Chekov was here for a research position at the astronomy labs, and had agreed to pick him up at the spaceport.

He was signing autographs when Chekov found him, eyes like mirrors under his retro shades. He spread his hands when he noticed Chekov at the edge of the crowd, and his bodyguards obligingly pushed people out of the way.

Sulu peered at him over the rims. "You're Spock's tiny Russian."

"Chekov, sir." Chekov breathed in carefully through his nose. The air was narcotic, left him feeling dizzy and loose limbed after a few lungfuls. "Pavel Andreievich. It is an honor to meet you."

Sulu raised his eyebrows and shook his hand. His hand was strong and sure, dry even in the dripping heat. "Come on, let's get you out of the sun before you wilt."

The bodyguards took his bag, and Sulu shepherded him into a purring black hovercraft. It lifted into the air with an archaic growl, and then whined away like laser fire.

"I cannot believe he told you to go to Risa," Sulu said at the stoplight, glanced at him sideways from the mocking corner of his eye. "Are you even old enough to drink?"

"Twenty, _sir_. How old are you?"

"Touché—twenty-three." Sulu spun them through traffic, hushing through the slivers of air between cars, close enough to rustle the hair and tentacles of pedestrians. "But I didn't come with a recommendation from the best in the fleet."

Wary for the usual fight, Chekov found himself suddenly disarmed. "He had many good things to say about you, sir."

"Yeah? He a fan of Tblathi now?"

"I'm not certain, sir. Commander Spock and I did not discuss this. What is Tblathi exactly?"

"Seriously?" Sulu was laughing.

"What?"

"It's—soccer." Sulu smiled, hard enough to crinkle his eyes and make Chekov want to impress him a little bit. "And call me Sulu."

\+ + +

Aisha Darwin was an accomplished navigator, but had taken up command after testing Non Com. She gave Chekov a PADD, a firm handshake, and then laid out the facts:

The investigation was top secret, and knowledge of its disappearance was limited to the original captains of the ship, and a few select others.

The Enterprise had been out of commission since the incident with Nero. The ship had taken substantial damage during the fight, had barely crawled back to port. It had been repaired, but the crew's resignation almost to a one, especially the bridge crew, had given HQ pause when they thought about the potential backlash of filling it with new people. It had rotted in space instead while Admiral Marcus had waited for the hubbub to die down, intending to send it on a symbolic inaugural mission to Klingon Territory within the year.

Until it disappeared.

"No one has been able to find any trace of it so far, so it's possible it's still hanging around, waiting for the hubbub to die down so it can use Risa for a gravity assist, but there's a chance it snuck by us somehow. Your job," Darwin explained, "is to figure out where they could have gone so we can fine-tune the sensors."

Neck deep in the data already, Chekov barely heard her. "Aye aye."

\+ + +

Sulu found him a tiny cottage on the west side of Suraya Bay, high enough to look down on the water, so clear and close he could see the schools of fish swim in with the tides, shadows under the sleepless water.

It was a dreamy little bungalow, tucked into the fold of a hill, in a narrow wooded islet stuffed with Risa's ubiquitous ferns and jasmine, and nestled between the resort that sloped up from the beach, and a construction site. The space was five times the size of his Starfleet issued living quarters on Vulcan, and he didn't have to share it as he had in the Academy. 

The cottage was in Sulu's name, and he wouldn't accept payment.

"Please. You're making research money, and I told Spock I'd get you settled. Don't worry about it."

Chekov _would_ worry, but nothing on Risa was conducive to worry. The weather was always perfect—no light pollution or cloudy skies when they were taking in data at the lab. His neighbors were all on holiday, too loud at night but never fighting. He watched them wade out under the glow of the moon, eating seafood plucked out of the water and onto their plates, laughing. In the morning the construction workers came, whirring over the rising walls in their hoverlifters, perching carelessly and precariously over a beam as they ate their lunch. Everywhere he looked, Chekov found happiness, prosperity.

Sulu brought him more furniture, filled the house with plants that flowered and entwined and cooed and tickled if he got too close. He explored the neighborhood in mid afternoon when the locals took their tea and tourists slept the afternoon away. He found a bakery that served real _lymmonyk_ and coffee in cups the size of soup bowls, that let him sprawl in the corner with a half dozen journal PADDS and occasionally rant at a particularly pathetic excuse for an article.

He did things he hadn't had time for in years: saw a few holos of popular releases, jerked off, bought a tribble, thought about writing his family.

The other investigators weren't exactly thrilled to have a wunderkind in their midst, but Darwin didn't give a shit and that was all that mattered. He came in and did his work, as far away from the scene of the crime as he was from the booming orgies he could hear on his way home every night.

Chekov wasn't jealous, not even curious, but Sulu seemed determined to make him go. The rest of Sulu's hospitality—his friendship, the house, his general interest in Chekov's free time—could be put down to Spock's request and recommendation. But Chekov was very certain that Spock had in no way asked Sulu to take him drinking.

No one had ever wanted to be his friend before. 

Chekov went.

In hindsight, it wasn't his most brilliant idea.

\+ + +

"Sulu! I'm not kidding, open this door!"

Chekov staggered into consciousness. His head felt upside down, and his stomach lurched as he turned toward the clock. _8:17_. 

He'd gotten home three hours ago.

He groaned at the door. The noise barely escaped his mouth, dry and sleep stuck.

"I know you're in there!" The voice—male and deep—kept shouting, door pounded. "You're treed, might as well give in and let me do my damn _job_."

Chekov rustled at the blankets, stomach roiling, and only tangled himself worse. His head was killing him, and he still felt drunk. He groped pathetically for the edge of the bed.

"I warned you, asshole. You gave me a master code and I'm using it."

The door opened just as Chekov tumbled to the floor. His stomach jumped into his throat and stayed there.

Staring at the floor, all Chekov saw was a pair of well-worn boots. They were Starfleet issue, dependable eternifiber, wrapped around dependable feet. He had strong calves, flexing as he shifted his weight. "You're not Sulu."

" _Nyet_ ," he rasped. "He is not here."

A pause. The man crouched, and for a bleary second all Chekov felt was sudden warmth under his jaw, in the patchy area he sometimes forgot to shave. The warmth blossomed into hands, firm and curving around his chin, holding his face like a bowl, tilting it up.

"Hey, kid, you all right?" The man's voice had turned nuzzling. His fingertips were cool, eyes wide and tilted, his mouth a perfect pout. His attention was absolute, arresting, as if Chekov were the only source of worry he had ever known, and one that had plagued him all of his life. His high cheekbones dipped into sad narrow shadows under his eyes, a striking shade of hazel, lidded with thick black lashes and a heavy brow. 

Chekov wanted to kiss him immediately and with magnetic intensity.

Instead, he leaned over and vomited all over the floor.

"Come on," he heard, as the man hauled him into the bathroom, all but carrying him in his strong, warm arms, wrapped in softest hunter green Argellian cashmere. Chekov puked up the rest of the night, feeling better and worse each round, and only realized at the end, when he was slumped over the bowl, that the man was rubbing gentle circles on his back.

This man's hands untangled every knot they touched, in kind and unthreatening swipes like Chekov was so much dough he was rolling. They sent Chekov spiraling back until he was two and sitting on the expanse of someone's thigh, a warm hand holding his belly while blurred, murmuring faces smiled down at him.

"All right, back to bed." The man pulled him up again, and Chekov let himself indulge in it, in his long fingers. He tumbled back into bed, squinted up at the blurry outline of the man's face.

The man looked down again. His petal lips quirked to the side.

Even his nose was perfect.

Chekov passed out before the man had even finished pulling a blanket over him.

\+ + +

When he woke up, there was a glass of water, a hypo for his headache, and a code.

There was a scripcard behind the glass of water, with the near indecipherable scribble: _call me in the morning._

And then below, in smaller and less confident script: _doctor's orders._

\+ + +

"He's more of a babysitter," Sulu had hedged over the comm. "I'll explain after the game."

Three days later, Chekov was at his first Tblathi game, in the pit with Sulu's support crew.

The _game_ , as it turned out, was a shifting pit of metal hills and waves. The players roared over them in hoverbikes, buffeted up and down by the undulating planes of the field. The objective was to get a ball through the net at the end of the field, which could only moved by blasts from the hoverbike stasis fields.

"It's based on an old Risan game," explained Gaila, Sulu's tech chief. She had introduced herself with hands stained blue from stasis grease. "I think Sulu's one of the few players who isn't from here."

"They've got waves in California too." Sulu smirked.

They stood next to each other, their smiles complementary. Sulu slipped his helmet on and Gaila knocked on it, hard enough to make Sulu fall back a step, before he regained his usual balance and hopped on his bike, blasting off and up with a rev of the engine, rolled the bike with aggressive flair as he entered the arena.

Chekov looked up at the stadium above them, packed thick and frothing with cheering fans. It was in the old Egalitarian Revival style, so every view had its own advantages, and none more than the others: down by the pit, he could count the grooves in the more battered bikes, but their roar floated half over his head, while in the nosebleed seats the acoustics had been planned with Ancient Greek perfection.

No one could have everything, and no one had nothing.

Chekov tried very hard to remember that as he watched Sulu do circles in the air while Gaila flipped him off, smiling brightly.

The game began.

It was a sport of surprising delicacy, considering the high injury rate and the constant foaming roar of the bikes. The ball could only be moved by wafts of exhaust air, so players had to maneuver very precisely in order to move the ball at all, never mind to a particular point on the field. Most players on each team were defensive, while three were obviously assigned to moving the ball forward.

Sulu, it became clear, was the boldest of them.

Sulu wasn't just flashy or daring. He flew like a man in search of something. The plates moved on the field with a complicated but discernible pattern, but Sulu knifed through them with blind confidence, as though he could force the ground to flatten through sheer force of terrifying will. Chekov had only known Sulu for a handful of weeks, and in that time he had been the man Chekov had seen moments ago: quietly affable, made charming by his extreme confidence.

Now Sulu revved the engine as a plate shifted from flat ground into a steep ramp, and launched himself into the air, turning in a hectic circle mid-air to slap the ball with his front field, the stronger of the two. The ball hurtled down the field as he landed only fractions of a degree away from flying over the front of the bike into a fragmented puddle of blood and bone.

He wasn't using the field patterns, Chekov realized. Looking around the field, he saw that none of the other players were either, even though ignoring them meant coordinated efforts were impossible, and hair pin turns and adjustments necessary.

 _Ah_ , Chekov realized with familiar disappointment: they weren't using the patterns because they hadn't noticed them.

After that it was hard not to be bored.

The crowd watched the game and Chekov watched the crowd, feeling out of place. It was home all over again, the only one in generations who wanted to leave the motherland. Vulcan, where he'd stuck out like a red-blooded thumb on the best of days. Starfleet—too young, too brilliant, too hesitant to push the kill button that separated Coms and Non-Coms. 

The entire crowd was waiting for an accident, their hands and other limbs tightening whenever a player careened dangerously to the side, roaring their pleasure as the players pushed themselves faster and faster, heading each other off to steal the ball or charging down the field until the ground rippled under their feet again.

And then Sulu's bike crashed into the ground.

No, not the ground, _under_ the ground. The bike had struck the lip of the plate hard enough to smash its stasis directors and tumbled, and now lay with its tail end resting precariously on the lip of the next plate and its front end pinning Sulu to the ground.

The rest of the stadium screamed while Sulu went pale and silent.

" _Shit_ ," Gaila swore next to him, followed by a string of what Chekov guessed were Orion swear words. She leapt up and took off running, heading down for the control chamber. The refs signaled that the field was clear after the last of the players huvved off, but almost immediately began to wave their arms again.

A man was climbing out of the stands, down into the pit.

No, not a man—the _doctor_ , those same hands Chekov had adored were now throwing the refs to the side while he leapt onto the field.

He made three plates before the first one turned into a jutting forty-five degree angle, blocking him from view.

Chekov was on the field before he even had time to think, but as soon as his feet hit the metal his head cleared. He could see the doctor again, a blur of dark hair and pale blue shirt. He could see Sulu's bike, too, but forced himself not to think about that. He concentrated on patterns instead, the one that would get him safely down the field. He'd studied complex algorithms when he was five, at the same time he learned somersaults in gym class. He remembered his gym teacher's whistle, his heavy mustache, the way he smelled like cabbage and talked about the Romulan War. Easy.

Not so easy when he finally got to the doctor, who was sliding down a plate that had tilted. Chekov grabbed him with one hand and the lip with the other, braced himself until it tilted back and then pushed to his feet, weight shifting as he had to let go of the flattening plate. Then he was off balance again as the doctor shoved him, face contorted with fury. Chekov had thought he'd been angry when he charged into his cottage, but now he frothed like a cornered animal.

Chekov wanted to touch him, reached out again. "You can get him after they power down the field!"

"It hit his _femoral artery_ ," the doctor snarled, turning mulishly towards where Sulu lay. Chekov pulled him back from the plate just before it dropped. "He has seconds before he bleeds out. Now get _away_ and let me _help_ him."

He wasn't going to make it to Sulu, and Sulu wasn't going to make it. For one yawning second, panic seized Chekov's entire body—made it thrum like its own engine—and then his head cleared again. "This way."

As soon as he realized Chekov was helping him, the doctor followed him doggishly. They made it halfway down the field, all the way to Sulu, and Chekov never had to check the doctor again, never felt the warm puffs of air from the doctor's breath deviate. He paused when Chekov did, shunted to the side with the slightest touch, perfectly attuned to Chekov's every direction.

It was more power over someone than he'd ever had in his life.

Sulu grimaced when they dropped down next to them, but looked too weak to do anything else. His leg was a swollen puddle of blood, gushing out heavily from where it lay under the bike.

The doctor was already whipping out his medkit. "Press," he ordered, pulling Chekov's hand to the place above Sulu's wound. "There, where the pulse is."

Chekov obeyed, now close enough to see how pale Sulu had really gone, close enough that he could see that the doctor's face was calm. Only the gentlest frown marred his face, a few tiny lines between his dark eyebrows—like he was looking down at an egg with a bit of shell in it. Ordinary.

The doctor tipped his head toward the plate above them. "How long before that goes?"

"Minutes, doctor." Chekov turned his attention to the engine readings. The crash had interrupted the stasis directors and the backup coolant field, and the plate's own heat was making the dilithium dangerously unstable, especially in this position. He looked for the hood latches, but one was twisted and one was gauging into Sulu's hip.

Move the bike, and it collapsed onto all of them—and then the plate dropped.

"This will hurt," the doctor warned, and regenned shut the part of the gash on Sulu's leg that was accessible. Quick, high power, and no time for anesthetic. It had to sting.

" _Fuck_ ," Sulu groaned.

"Help me move this," the doctor ordered suddenly, reaching for the bike.

" _Nyet_ ," Chekov blurted, batting away the doctor's hands. He wrenched off one of the shattered grips, started wedging the engine cover open. "I have to stabilize it first or it'll blow us all to pieces."

"Shit."

With a squeal, the engine cover popped open. Sulu shouted below, and the doctor hunched over him, muttering something. Chekov forced himself to ignore them after that, let his mind be drawn into the engine's puzzle. He found the coolant blockage, dismantled one of the non-functioning coolant blockers, and had the entire engine stabilized in twelve seconds.

Now for the bigger problems. 

"I will move the bike." He had to brace it from below, and move it to the right. He found his grip, took a deep breath. "You move Mr. Sulu. The sensors are broken, so it will drop on him as soon as the bike's gone."

"Are you sure you can—" But Chekov was already in his head again, all of his attention now on his own body, on every leveraged muscle as he pulled against the bike's head. He could do this: deep breaths, braced in his feet, every muscle tense and willing. He couldn't let the bike fall under the plate, or it would explode as the plate fell. Sweat dripped down his back, every muscle screaming. The bike was so fucking heavy. He could feel it start to lift, the tiniest fraction, barely enough to drag Sulu's open wound through but—

Large hands touched his—strong, confident.

Not the doctor's.

Lightheaded, on fire, Chekov and the newcomer pushed with a sudden burst of energy. The bike fell heavily off to the side, safely out of the way. Dazed, Chekov scrambled out of the way as the doctor hauled Sulu away. The man was helping with that too, pulling them both onto the next plate as it tilted, purposeful in the chaos. He pulled Sulu up with the doctor, and then turned and held out a hand for him. Chekov took it, arms trembling and let himself finally gasp as the plate fell, awed and exhausted.

The field whined as it finally powered down. 

Chekov panted, adrenaline still pumping through him. Sulu had finally passed out, although the doctor was still fretting over him, running his hands along Sulu's leg. Only the other man stopped him, tugged on his shoulder until the doctor turned, his face now finally etched with worry after the danger had passed.

"How many times do I have to tell you not to do stupid things without me?" he asked, blue eyes wide and concerned and all for the doctor, his hair shining in the sun. 

The doctor kissed him.

He did it the same way he'd thrown himself onto the field, with stubborn desperation. He grabbed the man's neck and pulled him in even closer, eyes shut tight, knuckles white.

The crowd was cheering.

Chekov had never felt so young, so far away from anything.

Gaila finally caught up to them, along with the medics.

The whole ordeal had only taken two minutes.

With the adrenaline fading, Chekov finally recognized the other man—the eyes, the air of command.

Chekov let himself be ushered off the field. The medics wanted to look him over too, even though he was fine. He felt numb, only vaguely aware of his heart galloping somewhere in his throat. He stared at the doctor, at his beautiful, angry face.

The doctor. Leonard McCoy. Hero.

Chekov looked up, stared at McCoy's husband.

"You saved both their lives," he said. "Thank you."

Chekov swallowed. "Thank _you_ , Captain. It's an honor."

He shook hands with the man who'd saved Earth.

"Please." The man smiled. "Call me John."

\+ + +

The press descended like Seelats, demanding to know how he had navigated the playing field, whether he'd been scared, what had been going through his mind. What had it been like to meet the most powerful man on the planet—in the entire sector?

Algorithms. Terrified. Saving his friend.

No comment.

He visited Sulu in the hospital for the few days he was there, and then at home when he was moved back. Gaila was there the whole time, along with another man who introduced himself as Ben, Sulu's boyfriend. Ben was often there, asleep, his hands splayed out half on Sulu's stomach; Gaila most often was at her computer, on a silent model to avoid waking Sulu, her concentration ominous.

\+ + +

A week passed. Risa had kept seasonal changes even if it jettisoned its earthquakes, and the air still became mercurial with encroaching summer. Sulu started to kvetch about spending so much time lying around. He spent his convalescence picking out a hoverbike for Chekov that he insisted Chekov accept.

The labs started in on a new cover project, while Chekov looked for traces of the Enterprise in the far reaches of the galaxy, more determined than ever to find the lost ship. The house next to his finished its construction, but now a steady supply of movers were always hovering. Chekov spent nights at home, curled up with the purring plants Sulu had given him, letting them nudge happily at his hair. The bakery began to reserve his table in the back; Chekov wrote a paper there, fingers sticky with lemon juice and sugar as he typed.

He tried to write a letter to Uhura, but her Starfleet comm address flashed _CLASSIFIED_. She'd been headed to Romulan space the last time they'd talked. Spock's was the same.

Chekov tried not to be lonely.

McCoy was never with Sulu when Chekov was, but his visits still left their tracks: irritated directions on scripnotes, the blankets pulled up to Sulu's chin when he was sleeping. 

Once there was even the smell of him, like cities in the rain.

\+ + +

The fifth time he came back from visiting Sulu, John Harrison was in his living room.

He looked up mildly as Chekov opened the door, as if the cottage were his office, the entire world his waiting room. He was dressed in black, hands clasped loosely behind his back.

Displaced from the grandeur of the arena to somewhere as menial as a living room, Harrison's past become more apparent. He had been created to surpass human evolution's clumsy toddles forward, and he looked it. His body strained at his civilian clothes, strong enough to haul people and machines interchangeably.

His hair had been meticulously slicked back. Chekov wondered why he kept it long at all. 

Did McCoy like to run his fingers through it?

"Mr. Chekov," he said. He held out a hand: long-fingered, cool, and strong. Viciously strong. 

Captain Harrison had been called out of commission in the months after the Kelvin incident. He had revolutionized Starfleet, turned it from a sluggish grain dump to the engine it was today. With Admiral Marcus's support, he had convinced the Federation to prepare for the next Romulan war: phasers that couldn't be set to stun, armed armadas, the Combat Exam. 

He was the one who had banned Chekov from the stars.

"Captain Harrison."

"Please—John." Even a half meter away, Harrison seemed to loom directly over him.

"Sir."

"I never had the chance to thank you."

"None are necessary, sir." His accent thickened.

Harrison's gimlet eyes flicked over him. "It wasn't, was it? You're probably the only one in that entire coliseum who could have gotten to Mr. Sulu—never mind rescue him from his predicament. Tell me how."

Chekov began to explain, watching as Harrison leaned forward, head down and jaw set, snatching up Chekov's words hungrily and then testing every one of them against the tooth of his intellect. His chest barely inflated; did he even need to breathe, or had he evolved past that too? He had been hailed as humanity's greatest creation ever since he'd been reawakened; his very presence was predatory, filled men with animal fear. 

And Chekov had his undivided attention.

Resentful pride buoyed up in Chekov's voice, his chest filled with a tight fragile bubble of it, made him lightheaded again—the way he had been in the arena. No one was dying now but Harrison was staring at him, waiting on the best he had to offer.

"Come visit us this weekend," Harrison said, when Chekov had finished. His voice was a mellifluous rumble. "I've asked Mr. Sulu as well. I know Leonard would like to thank you in person."

"Yes, sir."

\+ + +

Chekov sat outside that evening with a mug of Vulcan tea and let his pants get wet with dew. The moons rose, their light reflecting off certain particulates in the water that turned the entire bay into a wobbling mirror, sent blue light scurrying up the beach and the side of the house, where it seemed to wave in the breeze like ivy. Chekov wondered if anyone would ever live in there.

His grandmother, who had lived through the Romulan War, had hated empty houses, avoided dark lifeless spaces like an ancient plague.

Chekov had never hated anything.

He thought about McCoy and Harrison kissing.

The air was thick with Risan cicadas, other bugs that shined yellow as they flew, not unlike the old extinct Terran lightning bug. Chekov followed their flight paths, half dazed from the muggy weather and lulled by the rolling of the sea.

That's when he noticed the man.

Chekov startled, heart thudding at the idea that someone had been there and he hadn't known. But the man wasn't moving. His stillness had been the reason Chekov hadn't seen him, besides his own morose concentration. He seemed to be part of the landscape, as integral as the sea and the stars.

He was at the water's edge, feet bare and shoulders braced.

Chekov wondered what he was looking at: the night was empty, the water halcyon.


	2. Chapter 2

Harrison's estate sat on a hill above the bay, where the wind whistled and drew eerie paths in the landscaped gardens. The house was made of butter yellow brick, an imperious dot from across the water, and a decadent mass up close. Imported Terran fountains sent noisy trickles of water down to the beach. Pale travertine walls spread their arms around the gardens in front, and in back the orchards were heavy with Terran fruit: neat rows of pear and peach trees, flanked by pale olives and carefully plucked blackberry bushes.

Chekov and Sulu made their way through rooms that were stuffed with Terran marvels: Chinese silk carpets, Italian marble, luminous paintings that must have come from Zimbabwe.

They found them in the library, full of leather and paper.

McCoy noticed them first, let out a breath of whatever he'd been going to say.

"So glad you could come," Harrison said.

They had tea in the gardens in back: filled with flowers. Sulu had questions about them immediately, and before Chekov knew it he had spirited McCoy away, leaving nothing but his distant excited murmurs.

"I find flowers dull," Harrison said. _Dull_ , a sulking human emphasis.

"What are your hobbies, sir?" Chekov asked. It was only to be polite, but at the end of the question Chekov found himself actually curious.

Harrison sipped his tea. "Would you like to see, Mr. Chekov?"

He led him down a long plush hallway, out into a gray courtyard that seemed wholly different from the rest of the house—the walls were lifeless gray concrete, devoid of decoration. A long island stood at one end of the courtyard, functional Starfleet issue tritanium. Even the light that shone down onto the ground—the same that lit up the olive trees in flickering shades of silver-—seemed colorless here.

The only decoration was a series of tiny, patternless, rough-edged holes along one wall.

Chekov stared while Harrison disappeared into a smaller room off the courtyard, was even more puzzled when Harrison returned with a leather briefcase. It was old, shined with polish, unyielding in the afternoon light.

"This," Harrison said, "is the VSS Vintorez—the thread cutter."

He set the briefcase down on the countertop at the island, and opened it while Chekov watched. Inside were a set of indecipherable objects—cylinders, tiny capsules, heavy metal boxes, and a square wooden ring.

"It's Russian," Harrison said, like it meant something.

Chekov ran his hand along the air above the objects, not quite daring to touch them.

"It was favored for espionage," Harrison continued, voice flat but eyes piercing. He kept looking at Chekov like Chekov already knew what he would say. "Because it could be disassembled, packed away until it was needed and snuck past security measures. In those days, no one suspected a briefcase."

"When is it from?" Chekov finally asked.

Harrison smiled. "My time."

He began to take the objects out of the briefcase, assembled them. He screwed the cylinders, locked other parts into each other. The process was quick, mechanical; the product of muscle memory. Chekov wondered when he had learned—why he had learned.

It was a gun.

Now that it had been assembled, Chekov recognized it from wandering through a museum as a child, running his hands along the prickly stasis fields, watching the demonstration of ancient weapons with awe.

Harrison held it out, and Chekov took it gingerly. It was heavier than he'd been expecting. The wood was smooth, discolored on one side from use. The mouth of it was long and hollow. It fired bullets, Chekov realized—real, solid things that tore through their target, bit into them like teeth.

People who were hit with them died ugly deaths.

It mattered where you shot it. He peered into the tube at the top of the gun, still pointed down at the ground. The concrete stared back up at him, marked with an imperious cross.

He considered the holes in the opposite wall. They were clustered in groups, some of them larger where more bullets had hit.

There were so many of them.

"Do you know how to aim it?" Harrison asked, that same inflectionless tone.

Chekov was suddenly aware that they were alone in the courtyard. The rest of the house seemed lightyears away. He could hear nothing, not even the ubiquitous Risan cicadas. Even the air was empty here, devoid of the soporific weight that lulled the rest of the planet. He could smell something prickly, vague and acidic, unidentifiable.

Harrison was holding his hands out for the gun. Chekov remembered them next to Chekov's own, how they had moved the hoverbike together, how easy it had been once Harrison had been there. 

He braced the gun against his right shoulder, raised its long muzzle to point at the bullet-ridden wall.

"Good," Harrison said, and then all of a sudden his hands were on Chekov's shoulders, turned him so he stood slanted, his back to Harrison. He raised his right arm, braced the rifle more securely against his shoulder. He steadied Chekov's left hand under the body of the rifle, curved his fingers over Chekov's.

"If you pull the trigger, be ready for the kick."

His breath was shockingly hot on Chekov's neck. 

Chekov swallowed, stared at the marked spot in the opposite wall.

It wouldn't hurt anything. 

Harrison was still holding him—bracing him.

Chekov said: "I think Dr. McCoy and Mr. Sulu will wonder where we've gone."

Harrison's grip tightened for an instant—almost imperceptible—and then he let go. "Of course."

They returned to the garden.

McCoy and Sulu were looking for them, energized by their time in the sun. They stood close together, shoulders rubbing as they walked. Chekov wanted to push them apart.

"I never did get the chance to thank you," McCoy said. He smelled like grass. "I get a little mulish when someone's hurt. If you hadn't been there I would have been done for, never mind Sulu."

He had freckles. Had Chekov known that?

Sulu had a practice to show up fashionably late to, so they made their goodbyes. 

McCoy shook his hand. "Come back anytime."

Harrison put his arm around McCoy, possessive—made McCoy's smile winter slightly.

"Yes," Harrison said, low and sincere. "Do return."

\+ + +

Gaila invited him for tea and told him she'd figured out what had happened.

"Sulu's bike is a new model, and has a few modifications courtesy of yours truly," she said, holding her mug but not drinking from it. She smelled like lavender, and another flower he couldn't recognize. It was distracting. "Standard practice, to be honest, but it turned out to be faster than the field sensors, fast enough to charge under the plate before the sensors could shut it down."

Chekov scowled. He should have known: the technology had been lazy from the beginning. "The sensors must be very slow."

She didn't smile at "very," like people often did. "It's a very fast bike."

"Too fast, maybe."

"Maybe," Gaila allowed. "But it's turned out okay—Sulu won't get sued for the bike if he doesn't sue for the injury. Everyone goes home happy and with their own money."

"And that's it?" He remembered Sulu's pale face, all of the blood. "He almost died."

"Second law of thermodynamics, kid," she said, shrugging. "Everything breaks."

\+ + +

The search was going nowhere.

Chekov knew as much as he'd been told, which wasn't very much: the ship had been stolen, and the long-range sensors couldn't locate it. Chekov's job was to search possible courses, to see if more narrowly focused sensors could pick up on it. But after three weeks of nothing, Chekov knew that the likelihood of finding anything was only getting smaller.

No one said anything about his lack of progress. Darwin told him that HQ might have information any day now. 

He was going to pull his hair out.

He tried a little digging on his own, in the evening after he'd left the office, careful to cover his tracks. He got nowhere then either: he was good, but security was better. All of the official reports had been sealed. Chekov waited for them to shut down the investigation, or at least de-prioritize it and give him something else to do in the meantime. But nothing changed.

Chekov put his head in his hands, scrubbed his hair. The house next door rumbled.

It had finally been finished, and although Chekov never saw its residents he knew they threw parties every weekend. Supplies were delivered every day: exotic fruits and fragrant spices and crate after crate of clinking bottles. In the weekend afternoon the band arrived, their instruments clattering unmusically as they set up. And then the guests, crowds of them, all glittering. They laughed and danced all night while Chekov stared at his screen until the computer told him to go to bed..

Parties happened all over Risa as a matter of course. 

Chekov remembered the clubs Sulu had dragged him to, the raging orgies he passed on the way back from the labs late in the evening. But these were different. The rest of the parties on Risa were inviting: the tattoo of their music a siren call, spilling out from doors that were always open. The bars offered free drinks, while beautiful people from all planets roamed the hotels, luring in newcomers with a crook of their digits.

But the house next door had never called him in. The gates were high, the doors closed. The parties were enormous, loud enough to shake the frail walls of his cottage, but they were by invitation only. The guests showed up in black cars, expensive in their very invisibility. Even from his tiny window Chekov could see the money they were wearing, how it shined. It was a party full of beautiful things, people and music and dancing and laughter—and Chekov was shut out.

 _How is your work progressing?_ Harrison asked him via message.

Chekov replied: _It would be helpful if I knew more about the incident._

 _Have you ever climbed Galartha?_ Harrison asked.

Curious, Chekov said: _Not yet._

\+ + +

"The mountain is normally a fascinating phenomenon by itself," Harrison explained when they met at the foot of the mountain. It groaned eerily as it shifted, the one nod to Risa's unstable past that the Risans had kept. Harrison gestured to the top, obscured by mist. "But at this time of year there are particular wind currents that come down through the valley and then up the mountain again, which result in fascinating effects."

"What effects?"

Harrison smiled—an unusual expression, like he was trying on a shirt for the first time. "You'll see."

They began to climb.

Unlike the Tblathi field, the mountain's shifting did not follow a discernible pattern. Truly random occurrences made Chekov uneasy, put a weight in his gut that made it that much harder to leap over a sudden rolling rock. He leapt for a handhold and it shifted too—he would have fallen if not for Harrison's sudden strong hand on him, pulling him up to where he was, riding the wave of the mountain easily. Harrison seemed completely unfazed by the mountain's shifting, almost bored.

Chekov wondered why Harrison had asked him in the first place.

"I have urged Leonard to come here on several occasions," Harrison said suddenly. "He's not fond of heights. Or uneven surfaces. It's a pity—Risa has some of the most beautiful cliff faces in the world. Have you ever been to the Cliffs of Arlaya?"

Chekov remembered McCoy cursing at the Tblathi field, his breath on Chekov's hair as he followed him steadily, unhesitating.

"McCoy is a very brave man," he said.

Harrison looked back at him. "So are you."

Galartha was covered in the tiny shifting flowers native to Risa. They undulated gently with the ground, their roots expanding and contracting like breath. Violent shudders made them knock their pollen loose, and the air grew thicker and thicker with it as the wind picked up further up they went. Chekov couldn't help but inhale it, waited to sneeze but instead started to feel lightheaded, and then just light. 

"I'm told your work has been difficult," Harrison said.

Tension Chekov hadn't even noticed unknotted in his shoulders, dripped slowly down his spine—as the original captain of the Enterprise, Harrison was one of the few others on the planet who knew what Chekov was working on. "It is slow going, sir."

Belatedly, Chekov thought to look around to see if they were in earshot of anybody. But there was no one around—and of course Harrison had thought of it, probably could sense people of all kinds far better than he could ever hope to. A buzzing warmth started in Chekov's fingers and the balls of his feet and low in his belly. The wind went through his hair like a warm hand. He remembered McCoy petting his back when he was sick.

Chekov tried to think of what he could ask. What he really wanted to know had nothing to do with coordinates. "Do you think it was the Romulans, sir?"

It was the question no one was asking. Everyone had been holding their breath for the next Romulan war since the Narada had appeared from the depths of space. No one else had been willing to challenge Starfleet even before Harrison had sharpened all of its edges, and now—everyone he'd grown up with had said it was only a matter of time. And he was a matter of time—past and present all at once, too sharp at the edges of his too pale face.

"Perhaps," Harrison said. "It's too subtle a move for the Klingons, but Romulans frequently employ this sort of sabotage. They'll set up the board as they see fit, and wait to seize their moment. They excel at that. What about you?"

"What do I think, sir?" Chekov was having trouble following one thought to the next. They floated through his head like sticky pollen, sweet on his tongue.

"Will you seize the moment?"

Harrison was holding out his hand for Chekov to take, one last leap to the top. It was the question that had haunted him ever since the Combat Exam—the question that separated the soldiers from the scientists, the one that kept him locked down on earth. 

Harrison's hand was warmer now than before, in the arena—his fingers long and aristocratic. He pulled Chekov towards him so easily.

The top of the mountain was actually the rim of a valley, which sloped down gently from where they stood.

"The pollen is an intoxicant that draws tourists and locals alike," Harrison said in his low, soporific voice. "And at this time of year the flowers coincide with planetwide shifts that cause the phenomenon you see."

The phenomenon was that people—humans and otherwise—were floating gently into the sky. The bottom of the valley, not far from where they stood, had no signs at all that anyone had walked in it. The flowers waved at them docilely from the ground, unruffled.

Chekov stood frozen. There had been no signs, but everything about this place said sacred ground, and his time on New Vulcan had taught him to be wary of stepping in where he wasn't wanted.

"There's no need to be alarmed," Harrison said, as if reading his mind. "The point of this place is to come here."

Everywhere around him friends and lovers were floating in the sky, holding onto each other as they turned into giddy circles.

"What's causing this?" Chekov tried to ask, but started to float away as soon as the first word left his mouth. The more he breathed out, he found, the more he floated in his inhale. He drifted gently out to the center of the valley, where the other people were gathered in little groups. Strange hands took hold of him, held him close. Chekov gripped tight at first, worried he would float away into the sky—the fear was familiar, a freezing sort of ache that twisted his hands into knots.

And then that too drifted off.

Harrison looked no different when he finally looked down—maybe he really didn't breathe, Chekov thought dizzily, maybe that's why he was so unaffected.

He was watching Chekov so carefully, with a tiny smile on his face Chekov could only describe as wistful. His wide eyes, so preternatural before, now seemed childlike, his pupils almost completely disappeared in the sunlight. Chekov considered for the first time the idea that Harrison was jealous. Harrison was the only man on the mountain who hadn't risen with the others.

Chekov closed his eyes, imagined floating from here into space—no exams between him and the stars here, with the mountain so high and the sky so close. 

Chekov opened his eyes and realized he was shivering intensely. There was no one near him anymore—he really was floating away. He tried to turn, but only somersaulted dizzily. He was starting to feel sick, disoriented—it was getting harder to breathe even only a few meters above the other. He closed his eyes again and curled into a ball, trying to concentrate his mass. It wasn't working. He was going to float away.

Suddenly, he felt a steely bar around one arm, opened his eyes and found Harrison, yanking him back against the wall of his chest. Harrison had leapt, pulled him down out of the sky and into his arms. Chekov tried dizzily not to throw up as Harrison went back down the mountain, only minutes where it had taken hours to ascend it—or maybe it only felt like minutes, or maybe it had only felt like hours.

Harrison lay him on the cool damp ground when they had come down from the mountain. Chekov breathed the heavy air in.

"Hold on," Harrison said, running a cool palm over his forehead. Chekov tried to lean into it, managed only to lurch a little, long after Harrison had already taken his hand away. 

Dimly Chekov heard the chirp of a communicator. Harrison's low illegible voice flowed over him. He waited, felt like he was still floating, the world gone blurry and unpredictable. He felt cold hands on him, a pinch at his neck, and then—

He woke in the cottage. 

There was a message recorded on his PADD: _Next time, I'll make sure gravity doesn't interfere. — John_

When he stepped outside, he found another note. It was made of real paper, smelled like pressed trees and faint cologne.

 _We would be delighted_ , it said, _if Pavel Chekov would join us for a small event this coming Saturday._

The address was the house next door.

It was signed: _J._

\+ + +

Chekov recovered a few hours later, but the feeling of being unmoored came rushing back as soon as he stepped past the gates of the house next door later that week. His suit—which Sulu had insisting on buying for him, after taking him on a tour of his favorite shops and personal tailor—felt suddenly old and cheap, constricting.

He squared his shoulders and marched past the gate, into the front courtyard where the party first began.

Fruit from around the sector hung in the trees, all plump and pickable, a thousand different flavors grafted branch by branch, each tree its own garden of interstellar delicacies. Underneath, the waiters passed out intoxicants of every imaginable variety, to be drunk or inhaled or tossed sparkling into the air as each dictated. Chekov watched a diplomat take a glass of Capellan absinthe, a smoky dizzying vapor, and blow it gently into the ear of a beautiful Terran actor. The actor swooned: the gesture theatrical but the delirium sincere.

"You must be our host's new neighbor."

Chekov recognized with surprise Dr. Carol Marcus, the famous weapons specialist. She was paused arm in arm with another woman, blonde as she was, hair piled high atop her head.

"Actually," Chekov said, "I moved here first."

Dr. Marcus and the other woman laughed in sync. "I can see why he invited you."

Chekov wished he could. 

"Have you met Kirk yet?" the other woman—introduced as Christine Chapel—said in a low, sultry voice. 

"Who's Kirk?" Chekov asked. He felt flatfooted, like he was trespassing even though he'd been invited.

The women laughed again.

"Stick around," said Chapel.

"And if you like this one, come to my birthday party," Marcus said, and they were gone before he could answer.

For a long breath Chekov couldn't understand why he felt so overwhelmed. The parties he'd seen on the rest of Risa had featured some of the most updated holographic technology he'd ever seen—clubs that let you dance against the backdrop of a distant planet, in the murky depths of the sea while enormous creatures from the bottoms of a thousand oceans swirled past you, parting the crowd even though they weren't real. Even with his nose in a PADD his whole life, he knew of hundreds of others, whose only limit was imagination—parties set at a satellite station offplanet, where the gravity was artificial and arrhythmic, let you dance half floating in the air. 

Risa was also famous for its drugs, available for every species and guaranteed to be harmless—powders that let you turn into anyone or anything you wanted. Chekov had heard of clubs where you could be badly injured, even die—and wake up a few hours later, alive and bruiseless, the most intense experience of your life all owed to a harmless party favor.

This party had none of that—it was a traditional Risan house on the edge of a bay, with trees and people. There were no moons tonight, just a group of people against the same water and rising stars he saw every night.

But the fact that nothing here was virtual ironically made it that much more exciting. A man in a dress full of lights passed him. Chekov knew that if he reached out, he'd feel a thousand tiny lightbulbs, warm and fragile. 

An acrobat twirled on a wire overhead. There was no net beneath, and no attachment to the wire—if he fell from that height, he would die. Chekov watched transfixed as the acrobat began with cartwheels along the wire, which graduated into a series of ever more complicated twists and flips—he flew off the wire into the air, caught himself by the crook of his knee and twirled effortlessly upright. If he fell, he would die—Chekov couldn't let go of the thought. He would die.

The acrobat vaulted himself into the air, flipped tightly at the apex of his ascent and fell swanlike down to the wire—and then past it.

He hurtled to the ground as Chekov watched. Chekov started to charge forward, uncertain what to do but certain it had to be _something_ , when the acrobat was suddenly scooped up into the arms of a woman flying past on a long ribbon. The catch was silent, weightless, and they both sailed to the safety of a platform on the far side of the wire.

On the ground, Orion dancers twirled knives and fire. A dancer whose species Chekov didn't even recognize whirled in a spray of what seemed to be acid—it sank into the ground, causing the courtyard's Risan ferns to ripple and shudder.

Chekov walked carefully into the house.

The house was beautiful—Risan adobe whose edges flickered and blurred in the undulating light. He smelled champagne, which flowed out in fountains, and the druggish cacophony of a thousand perfumes. The air itself seemed to flicker with sparkling dust motes.

In the center people were dancing, sweating and writhing together, pressing on each other with their individual weight. On the corners they sat and huddled and laughed and lay prone, stared at by the rest.

The vices here too were real—no simulated sex partners, no holographs of every ancient taboo that you could wander through at your leisure, safe in the knowledge that you could exorcise your personal demons without harming anyone. Here were all the terrible things people could do—to each other, themselves, with the kind of excess that spilled out into the gutter and floated away into the sky, the kind you could hear for miles. And they made it so beautiful—they were all so beautiful, and they laughed so sweetly, and Chekov wished he could be part of them.

It wasn't even what he wanted. He didn't know what he wanted. He _wanted_.

"Impressive, isn't it?"

Sulu was standing next to him, in a sharp suit—civilian—a bubbling drink in his hand. He was impossibly handsome, half-smiling and gleaming in the party's flickering lights.

Chekov sighed. "Very."

Sulu looked at him sideways. "You know, he's done something no one else on Risa has ever thought to do."

"The house?" It wasn't what Chekov was trying to say—he couldn't explain it, but the house was part of it. It was a marvel, somehow more opulent even than Harrison and McCoy's across the bay.

"The guest list. Kirk's made his parties the biggest but most exclusive on the planet at the same time. I saw you looking around before, so I know you recognized at least a few people—but everyone here is an expert in their field, the best of the best from actors to astronauts."

That made sense—the walls, the eccentric invitations, the number of famous people even he had noticed. Chekov was suddenly intensely conscious of the fact that Sulu, in addition to being a star at his chosen sport, had saved Earth once.

Why had Chekov been invited? "Kirk?"

"Yeah, our host—have you met him?"

Chekov held up his invitation, rumpled from the heat of his hand as he held it in his pocket. "Just this."

Sulu shrugged. "If he wants you, he'll find you."

"You make him sound like a hitman."

Sulu laughed, slapped Chekov's shoulder, and wandered off.

Eventually Chekov wandered over to one of the bars, sipped bourbon and tried to spot McCoy. He was certainly talented enough to make the guest list—he had been on the Enterprise as well, had been responsible for saving half of the crew after the battle with Nero's men. He was the one who had discovered that in small quantities, Harrison's blood could cure life-threatening wounds. But it was hard to picture McCoy here, next to the dancers and the acrobats and the fountains of Andorian champagne.

The bourbon was good. He remembered his father and his uncles and all of their friends telling him how bourbon was actually from Russia, despite what you'd heard—every good thing was from Russia, all the way back to the garden of Eden. Russia had cradled the first people in her arms and then sent them off into the world with her blessing.

Chekov had believed his father for a long time.

He had just finished his drink and was readying himself for another, when a new glass was suddenly in his face. "Thirsty?"

The newcomer was handsome enough—tall, Terran, broad-shouldered and tan-skinned—but Chekov was in the mood to sulk. This man wasn't what he wanted. "Thank you, but I can get it on my own."

"Please—what kind of host would I be if I didn't refresh your drink?"

Chekov froze and felt hot at the same time. "I apologize, I didn't think—you don't seem—"

"Like the kind of asshole who throws parties like these?" Kirk asked easily. "I'm not—but I'm a pretty good liar. Jim Kirk."

Chekov looked at him more carefully now that he knew him—Kirk had the gloss of wealth on him, thick blond hair and a deep blue suit that fit him everywhere. But his eyes were creased, his face scarred, narrowed only in the way people who had gone hungry for a long time were.

He was holding out his hand.

Chekov shook it, more confused than ever about who this man was, why he had invited him. "Pavel Andreivich Chekov. Why lie?"

Kirk laughed—the obnoxious kind adults used when they thought you asked something hopelessly naive. Chekov wanted to hate it, but—it was a nice laugh, too. Kirk's face split with it, his white teeth showing, his eyes crinkled. "That's the only way I can get people like this to hang out with me."

He gestured at the crowd, who moved past him with indifference. Chekov wondered how many of them recognized Kirk at all.

"Then—why invite me?" Chekov had never asked for praise before—for a reason he was necessary. He hated doing it, hated the silence before Kirk spoke again. The party raged around them but everything suddenly seemed so quiet, so narrowed to the two of them.

"You're the best navigator in Starfleet," Kirk said.

"I'm not a navigator currently, Mr. Kirk. I track stars—ships in stars."

"Details. You came here on a mission for them, didn't you?"

Chekov straightened immediately. "It's classified."

Kirk waved his hands, reassuring. Even with his wide motions, his drink only frothed happily in his glass, never spilling. "It always is with them. I'm curious, but I know how tight Starfleet keeps a lid on these things. But I like navigators—they know how to find things."

Chekov shrugged, wishing he could explain. He wanted so desperately to find the Enterprise—to find a way into the stars, to find anything. He wanted to find whatever Kirk was looking for as he scanned the room.

"You graduated Class of 2258, right?" Kirk turned back to him.

" _Da_ ," Chekov said, swallowing.

"I was set to be that year before I washed out," Kirk said, easily enough. Chekov wondered how. He could barely mention the Combat Exam, the only test he'd ever failed.

He offered a toast. "To new neighbors, and old classmates."

Kirk grinned and clinked his glass.

\+ + +

"He's either a liar, a refugee, or a criminal."

Sulu raised his eyebrows. They were strolling the beach. Sulu had just finished practice, and was sweating and glistening in the sun, completely at ease. Chekov felt very pale by comparison, stifling in the early afternoon heat.

"He said he had been in Starfleet." Chekov had attempted to look Kirk up in Starfleet's records. There were two or three Kirks, but none of them were the right one. He checked a few other years, just in case Kirk had been bending the truth—nothing.

That meant one of two things: Kirk was lying, and had never been to Starfleet. He'd lied in order to impress Chekov, or to become closer to him, which seemed unlikely. Why would a man like Kirk need to lie to impress someone?

The other option was that he was not lying, but that Starfleet was. They protected Starfleet members from public record for two reasons: for the safety of the individual, to protect them from domestic or national violence; or for the safety of the institution, to cover up sensitive or damaging information.

The only record of him that Chekov could find was Risan, where his parties were gossiped about in every tabloid in business. But before that—silence.

"He was in Starfleet," Sulu said mildly—but in a way Chekov had come to recognize as him controlling his temper.

"So why did he disappear?"

"It's not my story," Sulu said, apologetic.

"Can you tell me what he _wants_?"

 _With me_ , Chekov didn't add.

"I don't know." Sulu stopped, but then continued when he saw Chekov's face, "But I'm betting it has something to do with McCoy."

"Dr. McCoy?" Chekov was genuinely surprised. 

"Yeah, they were friends—way back when. I'm pretty sure half the reason he throws those stupid parties is to lure McCoy in."

"He doesn't know him very well, then."

Sulu snorted. "Jim's never been good at small gestures."

When Chekov returned home, there was another paper invitation on his doorstep: _Would Mr. Chekov be interested in joining me tomorrow afternoon at 13:00 at the pier?_

The paper frayed from the saltwater in his hands—it was pure, old style, unmixed. It had to cost a fortune.

It's a small gesture.

\+ + +

Chekov saw Kirk before he noticed the sailboat. The boat was nearly ten meters long and gleaming, but it paled next to Kirk smiling, dressed in pale blue. 

"Come out on the water with me?" Kirk asked the question like an order, made even the most banal suggestion sound like the adventure of a lifetime. "I want to show you the cliffs of Arlaya."

An hour later, Chekov found himself nursing a lukewarm glass of champagne he didn't really want, willing his stomach to settle as the water kicked up around the boat, tossing him back and forth like a schoolyard bully. 

The cliffs, when they crested, were towering and red until they dropped into the greening sea. The wind howled up from the ocean through the rocks, the wail echoing out to them. The cliffs were torn down the middle, and in between a ravine stretched inland, curved and splintered, seemingly never-ending.

Chekov marveled, was at the prow before he remembered he wasn't on solid land. The boat wobbled precariously under him, but he didn't care. Even the small ripples of the waves inside the bay were impossible to predict, sent him reeling every time he thought he had his sea legs. 

"I've heard about these—the thermals from the ocean are some of the strongest in the sector. They're supposed to howl."

"Sing, according to the Risans," Kirk cut in, chest puffed out like he'd carved the cliffs himself. "They said that one of their whale gods, Sula, had a daughter—Arlaya—who went on land to fight with giants. But Arlaya was blind, so Sula told her that she'd make the cliffs sing—all Arlaya had to was find them and jump. Arlaya goes, and Sula starts puffing air up into the ravine."

"And she's still doing it?" Chekov asked.

Kirk shrugged. "Arlaya never came back, apparently. The Risans think she will, though—she does, then the wind stops singing, the rocks crush together, all life sinks shrieking into the watery void, and the world ends. _Jamaharon_."

"What do you think?" Chekov asked.

Kirk turned, smiling. It wasn't the dazzling grin that Chekov had seen before, the one that hit you like a drug; that reeled you in wriggling and made you smile back. This was a private smile, thin and uncertain. This was a smile that said you had solved the puzzle; that you had figured out the combination—that now you would see the real man behind it, the one you had been searching for. It was a smile that took you as you were, flaws and all. "People usually come back.  
Chekov said carefully: "But Dr. McCoy hasn't."

Kirk huffed a small laugh. "Sulu told you about that, huh?"

"Dr. McCoy would come if I asked him."

He still had McCoy's code, had never taken him up on his invitation to call. He would have them meet at the cottage, away from the noise of the city, the imposing grandeur of their homes. He imagined they might be grateful.

Kirk shrugged, turned back out over the waves. "That might work."

\+ + +

He sent Kirk a message explaining his intention, but told McCoy only that he wanted to have him over in turn. He thought about making up a reason, but decided against it—he didn't want to lie, wanted McCoy to come over only because he had asked.

Kirk insisted on arriving early, and brought six people with him, who carried several boxes apiece. Chekov watched nonplussed as they began unloading baskets and baskets of fruit, none of it local or even Terran—Aaamazzarite lemons, Denobulan passion fruit, Romulan pomegranates, Bolian pineapples sliced down the middle and dripping juice, and even Akritirian pears, which were bright purple and supposedly only enjoyed by the planet's dictator.

Chekov wanted to ask about it, but Kirk had started to pace anxiously as soon as he entered the cottage, and gave only distracted answers to even simple questions. He stared at the walls, at the windows, out beyond them to something Chekov couldn't see. Finally he chose one of the two chairs Chekov had in his small central room, and sprawled in it. He'd chosen the one with armrests, and alternated between slouching against them and gripping them loosely, head down like he was bracing himself. The fruit filled the room with the soft scent of a dozen planets, none of which Chekov had ever been to. Chekov was sure it was from the multi-grafted trees Kirk kept out front. 

He had seemed so relaxed at the party, so unflappable. Chekov began to worry he had made a mistake by inviting McCoy without telling him—maybe McCoy was avoiding him on purpose, maybe Kirk had been struck from Starfleet's record for something terrible.

"Let me call—" he began, thinking he'd catch McCoy before he came, warn him so that he could get away.

But then McCoy was at the door, throwing it open carelessly. "Sorry I'm late, I ran into—"

McCoy stopped at the threshold of the room, a bottle in his hand—vodka, Chekov noticed, presumably for him. He half expected McCoy to drop it, but instead he clutched it tighter, his long fingers curling around the neck of the bottle. Surprise wiped his beautiful face blank, made him stand taller, and Chekov realized for the first time how much effort McCoy put into making himself seem smaller and less threatening. When he stood up straight he towered, holding the bottle in front of himself like a weapon.

Kirk seemed frozen, his heavy brow throwing his bright eyes into shadow. 

It was so much quieter than the party only a few days before—no music, no laughter, no raucous shouting under the swirling lights. There was only the sound of the cicadas outside, unmusical and relentless.

McCoy's shoulders were rigid, lips sneering. "How _dare_ you trick me like this!"

Chekov had expected that, had braced himself for the weight of McCoy's disapproval. But McCoy wasn't talking to him, wasn't even looking at him. 

He was glaring at Kirk.

Kirk still said nothing. Even sitting down, he still loomed in the room, motionless and implacable.

"So did that ice planet take your tongue or just your guts?"

Kirk shrugged with one shoulder, leaned his head back slightly, as if daring McCoy to come closer, to hit him with the bottle he was still clutching.

"You arrogant insufferable idiot, you don't get to give me the goddamn silent treatment— _you're_ the one who left. I don't have anything to say to you."

Kirk raised his eyebrows.

McCoy's entire body twisted, and Chekov braced for a fight—but then McCoy turned to the door, started to storm out. "I'm not going to just stand here and—are those _Altair_ grapes?" He stopped suddenly, glanced around, whirled back to Kirk. "Christ, Jim, what's wrong with you? Half of these are poisonous."

Chekov remembered the vines from Kirk's trees, where they twisted low around the trunks, the fruit so tantalizingly easy to grasp.

Kirk finally spoke: "Space is disease and danger, Bones, remember?"

McCoy reared back like he'd been struck, then blinked, as if dazed. "I—I remember."

He barely spoke above a whisper, a man who'd spent half his time yelling every time Chekov saw him. Kirk leaned in low, as if McCoy were still speaking, something Kirk was desperate to hear. "I kept inviting you."

McCoy stepped closer, carefully, like a stag picking his way over stones. 

Kirk held still. 

Chekov held his breath.

McCoy said, "I've always hated parties—didn't you know that?"

He had said it softly, almost kindly, but even Chekov heard the hurt in it. Kirk's shoulders slumped, his face small and unhappy and scarred.

This had been a mistake.

Chekov left quietly, wished he had left earlier. When he returned, both of the men were gone.


	3. Chapter 3

_Darwin tells me you've been stymied,_ Harrison sent him, weeks later. _Perhaps I can be of some assistance._

Chekov hadn't contacted Harrison again since Galartha, could refuse, even if the invitation had included his work.

He replied: _Of course, sir._

At Harrison's orders, Chekov rode his hoverbike out to the spaceport, where Harrison met him with a private craft.

"The USS Invention is docked outside Risa for shore leave and repairs," Harrison explained as he and Chekov boarded the small craft that would take them to the docking station. "It's no Enterprise, but I thought you might like to explore a Constitution-class vehicle."

He couldn't see how that would help with his research, would do anything except make it all worse. He had wanted to explore a ship since he was six years old—equally loathed the thought of touching what he could never have.

The ride up to the dock was short but cramped. Chekov smelled that same prickly smell he had in the courtyard at Harrison's house, wondered what it was.

The ship was so vast, even against the black expanse of space behind it.

As they sailed towards the dock, Chekov thought about the fact that the last time he had seen Harrison, he had nearly floated away. 

The shuttle pulled in to the dock soundlessly.

Harrison put his hands behind his back as they entered the dock's viewing gallery, where several Starfleet officers and scientists had gathered at the window. They turned, and Chekov recognized Carol Marcus immediately. Her eyes widened as she saw him, and Chekov indulged in a petty moment of pride, that she had noticed him first.

"Captain Harrison."

"Dr. Marcus," Harrison returned. He gestured to Chekov as if to introduce him, but Marcus waved him away.

"I remember you," she said with a wink.

"Doctor," he said, not sure what to presume. Like the last time, Marcus seemed like she knew something Chekov didn't, but would only tease him if he asked. She was so at ease in a fleet base, PADD balanced nonchalantly against her hip—and why wouldn't she be? Her father was the most powerful man in the fleet, the only one Harrison had to answer to. She had been born into this.

She was a weapons specialist. She must have passed the Combat Exam with her eyes closed.

Marcus glanced between Harrison and Chekov, came to some conclusion Chekov couldn't decipher, and then asked: "Are you coming to my birthday party, Pavel?" 

It could have been a flirtatious question, but her tone turned it testing.

"I would be delighted," Chekov said, blinking.

"Excellent." Marcus grinned, and Chekov was struck by how open it was, how much it reminded him of Kirk. "It's a month from now. Everyone is going to be there."

"Even the admiral, I'm told," Harrison added.

"He'd better." Marcus turned back to the window. "Are you headed to the _Invention_? It's empty right now, and the photons and gravity are down, but the life systems are all running."

"Always reassuring," Harrison said, sounding bored. Chekov didn't marvel; Harrison carried himself like a man who didn't need anything, not even oxygen.

They boarded the ship.

Chekov had never been anywhere without at least artificial gravity, but found that it wasn't so bad. Compared to the weightless, unmoored feeling of Galartha, it was more than manageable. He felt free, not tugged into the abyss.

It was easier to float along the hallways than he'd thought—easy to know how much to push, how to angle his jump, how to land. Still, he remained cautious—he couldn't help but imagine himself launching too quickly, go careening through the wall, through the hull, puncturing the ship like a bite.

The ship was enormous, he realized as he followed Harrison, meandering through the hallways to the bridge. In the labs on Risa, a ship had seemed tiny, impossible to find amidst the rash of stars and planets. But the _Invention_ wasn't even as big as the Enterprise, and still it seemed impossible that anyone could lose it.

The vastness of it led him to another question, one which clarified as they reached the bridge. Harrison settled gracefully near the captain's chair, one hand on the arm, and held out his other for Chekov. Chekov launched himself lightly from the doorway, floated over until Harrison spread his large palm against his chest to stop him.

He kept his hand there.

Chekov could hear his heart thudding in his chest, tried to ignore it in favor of staring at the navigator's seat. It was so close, angled carelessly from when the navigator had last stood up. The only thing stopping him was Harrison's hand on him, holding him gently caged to the chair. 

The bridge was so big, and so empty with only the two of them.

"You would be an excellent navigator, Chekov," Harrison said into the silence.

 _I know_ , Chekov did not say.

"You can retake the Combat Exam, if you wish," Harrison continued. "This ship will be heading for Klingon territory in a matter of weeks. I could see to it that you're there, where you belong."

Like everyone else in command, Chekov had failed the Kobayashi Maru well enough to pass. It had been a difficult choice to make, but like everyone he knew that voyaging in space meant sacrifice, even what you held most dear. You had to be willing to lose it all to get even close to the stars.

But the Combat Exam had asked him to take—had asked him, if he had been ordered to, if he would take the lives of his own crew.

He knew why the policy had been implemented. Harrison's entire campaign, the support of Admiral Marcus and other trusted officers of the fleet, had been to strengthen the lack of discipline in Starfleet. A humanitarian mission wasn't enough to protect the Federation from danger, not after the Kelvin incident had sent them teetering on the edge of another Romulan war.

Chekov had grown up with people who refused to speak Standard for fear they would lose the mother tongue. He knew about the urge to protect, how it made you willing to cut away everything that held onto you, for fear it would snatch you away. Starfleet had needed someone like that, someone who would cut off not just his own arm if it meant the lives of his crew, of a city, of a planet, but who would mutilate everyone on the planet to save their lives.

Harrison was the kind of man who would. 

He was willing to endure any pain, to carry out even the harshest penalties if it meant the greater good was protected. His focus was a kind Starfleet had never seen before, laser sharp and searing, and it had sent the entire fleet marching behind him, organized and orderly. The Narada incident had shown how well founded an investment it had been, and Harrison's power had been growing ever since.

And now he was focused on Chekov.

"Who," Chekov coughed, turned his head away, avoided Harrison's heavy gaze, "Who would stand to gain anything by keeping the most valuable ship in the fleet?"

Harrison reeled him in closer, hands warm against his back, against his hips. They surveyed the bridge together, side-by-side. "Now you're beginning to ask the right questions."

Chekov licked his lips, thought about it. "The fewest crew ever used to keep a ship working was fifty. Even if you slashed that in half, that's still a lot to sneak past with no trace."

Harrison nodded slightly, waited for him to continue, unblinking.

"So: the guards and surveillance equipment were bribed or otherwise in on the job. Unlikely, given the number of them, and the video surveillance does not seem to be tampered with. It wasn't seized by some outside force, like a docking anchor, either."

"Where does that leave us?"

"I don't know."

"Yes, you do." 

Chekov frowned. "Sir?"

Harrison grabbed him, launched the both of them over to the navigator and pilot's table, grabbed the railing at the front of it, putting them between the table and the window. He gestured angrily to the array of stars before them, the movement wide, unbalanced. "It's out there, Chekov, you know it is. How did it get there? Where is it?"

"I don't know." Chekov struggled to keep his tone even. It hurt to admit he had no idea; that he was as lost as when he first arrived, that his chances of success diminished exponentially every day. 

"Yes, you do," Harrison said, and pushed him against the window. It was cold, jarring against Chekov's back, made him gasp—Harrison was on him before he could draw breath, pinning him against it. "You must know."

"Captain," Chekov tried. He didn't know what to say, wanted to shout.

"Tell me," Harrison insisted, voice so low he was nearly growling, made all the hairs on the back of Chekov's neck prickle. He could crush him so easily—just an ounce of pressure from his savage, timeless muscles, and he'd put his hand right through Chekov's chest, through the pane behind him. Already, his wide flat palm felt like a weight on his sternum, down his ribs, pressed right up against his stomach.

"A skeleton crew," Chekov wheezed. "Someone figured out how to get the ship moving with only a handful of crew members. They could sneak on without being noticed."

Harrison lessoned his grip. "Who could orchestrate such a thing?"

"No one, sir," Chekov admitted, voice breaking. He ran a hand over his chest where Harrison had held him. His skin felt hot under his shirt, flushed with blood. He met Harrison's eyes, let the truth come out: "It would be impossible for anyone to do it—a superhuman feat."

He didn't know what he'd been expecting for that—for Harrison's face to be wiped clean again, all emotion gone hidden the wall of his preternatural strength. Or a smile, a nod, some subtle fraction of a confession that Chekov would be able to pick up on after his time on New Vulcan.

But instead, Harrison's face crumpled. He seemed to age as Chekov watched, suddenly burdened, lines harsh on his face. He was so old, Chekov realized—but so much of that time had been spent asleep, drifting. How old had he been when he'd been condemned to wander?

"But we're going to find it, sir," Chekov said, breathless again.

"Do you think that we will, Pavel?"

Harrison's face was more open than he had ever seen. For once he'd asked gently. He was asking not as a commander, but as a man who'd lost his ship—his birthright, his reason for joining Starfleet, for living at all.

Chekov knew that feeling.

"At this point, sir, the chances of finding the ship with long range sensors are like finding a needle in a haystack. The longer we try, the further the ship can go."

"What makes you so sure it's gone? There's been no trace of it ever coming by Risa."

"There's been no trace of it _anywhere_. And why would it stay?"

"That depends on who stole it, and what they want."

Any possible theory pointed to leaving—thieves would want to take it far away and scrap it for parts; Romulans or Klingons would want to get it to their own territory, where they could dissect or display it at will.

"Who would stand to gain anything by keeping the most valuable ship in the fleet where it could be found anytime?"

"But it hasn't been found," Harrison replied, not unkindly, although that didn't make it sting any less.

He was still pressed up against Chekov, close enough to breathe his air.

He tried not to think about them, tried to focus on nothing but the cold pane behind his back.

Harrison was looking at him so intently.

"Will you keep looking?" he asked.

Chekov said: "Of course."

\+ + +

He couldn't bring himself to call McCoy again, not after the last time had ended so poorly—and not with whatever had happened with Harrison, even though it had been nothing.

But neither could he stand the idea that McCoy had left and Chekov didn't know where he was.

He found him at the end of one of Sulu's practice sessions, poring over his scar. Gaila and Sulu's ridiculously hot husband Ben were chatting in the corner, unconcerned, while the rest of the players examined their hovercraft or stretched. Chekov paused at the doorway, watched unnoticed.

Chekov watched McCoy scowl at Sulu's scar and thought that anyone who cared that much about the frailty of human flesh would have been drawn to Harrison like a moth to a flame. How novel it would have been to be with someone who would never scar.

And Harrison? What had Harrison seen in him?

He stared too long, found McCoy looking at him when he blinked. 

"I'm sorry," Chekov said quickly, unused to apologizing. "I should have told you when I invited you over. I didn't know what would happen."

McCoy squinted at him for a moment—too long, long enough to remember something he'd forgotten. Had he forgotten that Chekov was there?

"Don't worry about it," McCoy blustered, and Chekov knew that he had. "Kirk is an ass; I know it wasn't your idea."

Chekov held his breath, didn't say anything as McCoy left, ran away before Sulu or any of the others noticed him.

Chekov knew he fell in love easily, mostly with other people's brilliance—with Spock's, first, then Uhura's, Sulu's, Darwin's, Kirk's. He waited for McCoy to pass, like a common incurable cold. 

He hoped Harrison would lose interest in him so he could lose interest in Harrison.

Spock was wrong. Wanting was hell.

\+ + +

"The Romulans want war."

His weekly briefings with Darwin were always oral. Nothing could be entrusted to PADD.

"They have the ship?"

"That's the latest tip," Darwin explained. "One of our contacts there thinks Proconsul Manilius is angling for another campaign to lead, and is stirring the pot with Starfleet to try to agitate an attack."

"But then why haven't we seen it?" Chekov had scoured typical Romulan paths and ports—nothing.

"No one wants to be seen as the aggressor—best guess now is that the Romulans didn't steal it themselves, but hired a private contractor. Starfleet will have reason to attack, and Manilius will be able to claim that they had nothing to do with it, and are only defending themselves."

Chekov reeled. The mission had always been an important one—but until now the theft of the Enterprise had seemed symbolic. Now, finding it or not could mean war—the biggest one since the last Romulan war, which had left his planet devastated.

Harrison would be put in charge of the fleet.

One thing at a time. "Does Captain Harrison know about this latest development?"

Darwin blinked, as if she had been expecting a different question. "Of course—he was included in the original briefing from our Romulan liaison."

Harrison had guessed from the beginning. No wonder he had been so impatient.

Chekov remembered his hand splayed against his chest, being pressed between him and the void of space.

\+ + +

_You never learned to shoot_ , came the next note from Harrison. _If you'd like, we can resume at the range._

Chekov looked at the message on his PADD and sweltered in the cramped heat of the cottage. He ignored the cooling system and left the windows open, liked the wet breeze that came in at night off the bay, liked not having to turn the lights on during the day. But now it was too much, too closed in even with the windows open.

He left the PADD inside, walked in broadening circles around the cottage, not letting himself go beyond a certain line he designated.

He remembered the quiet of the range, the clustered holes in the wall, Harrison's hands over his. There was nothing else to talk about there, no hum of the ship, no floating tourists. And McCoy clearly never went there, never made it smell like himself, never patched over the holes in the wall. Chekov remembered Harrison's arm around McCoy, the way McCoy's smile had withered.

He had come to the edge of the water, paced fretfully in the sand until he noticed someone else at the corner of his vision.

It was McCoy.

He was wandering along the edge of the bay, hands in his pockets, squinting out over the water.

"What are you doing here?" Chekov asked, hating how naked the hope in his question was.

McCoy turned, eyes wide, clearly uncomfortable. "I like this side of the bay. Quieter."

He wasn't here to see Chekov.

"I should have—" McCoy was clearly scrambling for words. "I apologize, I wasn't really thinking—"

"That's all right," Chekov said awkwardly. "I've been busy also."

McCoy looked up at that, seemed to recover, stared at him through his lashes. "Yes, Dr. Marcus told me you got to see the _Invention_ the other day."

Chekov tensed.

"With Captain Harrison," he said, because that was obviously what McCoy was asking about.

McCoy raised an eyebrow. "He did mention he was helping you with your work."

"Your husband is a brilliant man."

"I know," McCoy said stiffly. He rubbed his own hands together, smoothed the creases in his pants around his hips. "Especially when he knows what he wants."

"What does he want?"

"You, obviously," McCoy said—surprised, like he thought Chekov had known.

Chekov gaped.

"I'm _not_ —"

He was giving himself away, knew it and couldn't stop it.

But McCoy went on like he hadn't noticed, "He can be a difficult man to say no to."

Chekov finally gave in, "Is that what happened with you?" 

To his credit, McCoy only chuckled—cynical, his smile lopsided. "That would make it simple, wouldn't it?"

Chekov hadn't been expecting that.

"That's what Jim had told himself too, I think." He nodded at the house, where it stood unapologetically. "That John was the most powerful man in the fleet, and here I am, a simple country doctor. Or that I somehow did it by accident—that all he had to do was show up and I'd see fate had sneezed, made me mistake one for the other."

He turned back to look out at the house across the bay. Maybe he came here because it seemed smaller from a distance.

"But then _why_ did—"

"Why John?" McCoy asked gently, when Chekov didn't finish.

Chekov shrugged. He wanted a reason—to tell Harrison that he couldn't come, to not want to.

"Because I was…" McCoy began. He cleared his throat roughly. "You ever heard of aviophobia?"

" _Da_ ," Chekov allowed, wary at the sudden change in subject. "Fear of flying."

"I used to suffer from it pretty bad when I first joined Starfleet—shuttles, gliders, hovercraft, spaceships, you name it. I just couldn't stand the thought of being locked in some box while it was out of my control."

Harrison had plucked Chekov right out of the air.

"You've met him," McCoy said. "What do you think of him?"

McCoy was staring at him intently now, eyes wide under his long lashes.

Chekov shrugged again, trapped. "He's the most trusted man in Starfleet."

Now it was McCoy's turn to look surprised—and then he huffed a laugh, rueful. "You're a good kid, Chekov."

It was the first time anyone had called him _kid_ and it hadn't stung.

McCoy had loved Harrison.

 _I apologize, Captain,_ Chekov said, _But perhaps another time._

\+ + +

The problem was that Chekov had never had a secret he wanted to share before.

People told him things all the time, showed him things they wouldn't have anyone else: because he was young, and had a face they mistook for curious. He'd tried not to learn: had looked away when Vulcans wept, had never told anyone about Harrison begging him for his ship.

His own secrets were the keeping kind: that his family had not forgiven him, that he had not found the _Enterprise_. That he wished Harrison had never been found. That he wished he'd never met McCoy.

But now, suddenly, he was on a planet seemingly without secrets—where people lounged naked in the capitol, where they traded their tightest wrapped memories over cocktails and orgies.

Chekov couldn't look away, couldn't pretend he hadn't seen. The summer felt like a chrysalis, infinitely fragile.

He wanted Harrison. He didn't want to hurt McCoy.

"If you were trying to make a decision," he asked Sulu one day, as they were walking on the beach. "And both choices seemed like the wrong one, what would you do?"

Sulu had taken him to his favorite surfing spot, held his board under one arm as they walked. He was dripping wet, hip cocked, smelled like the sea. "This about your work?"

"Maybe," Chekov said, glad for the easy cover.

Sulu shrugged. "Make a choice, punch it, stick the landing."

Chekov gestured, frustrated. "But how do you choose? How do you figure out what's right?"

Sulu huffed a laugh, unruffled. "You're not the only one who knows about algorithms, Chekov."

"What?"

"When we were at the game," Sulu explained. "The Tblathi one—that's how you moved around the field, right?"

" _Da_ ," Chekov allowed, wary.

"That was a good idea," Sulu said, smiled disarmingly. "But before that—did you wonder why no one else did? None of the players?"

Chekov tried to think of a polite way to say what he was thinking and couldn't.

Sulu laughed. "I'm the best pilot in the fleet, Chekov."

"So why, then?" Chekov couldn't resist asking.

"Because Tblathi was originally played in the ocean—on actual waves, in storms, the kind you can't predict. That's the game."

"So you pretend to be stupid to play."

"That's the game," Sulu repeated. "You can't figure it out from the outside or you'll miss the whole point. It's about trust. You have to be in it—to be part of it—to win."

"But you didn't win," Chekov said, too irritated to hide his contempt. "You lost, and you almost died, and you nearly took two other people with you."

Sulu made a frustrated noise. "Haven't you ever taken a leap of faith?"

Chekov straightened. "I'm the first Russian from _Sankt-Peterburg_ to join Starfleet since the Romulan War. I joined when I was fifteen years old. My entire family disowned me for leaving. I know about leaps of faith."

Western Russia had had an isolationist policy since the Romulan War, refused to teach Standard in schools, kept their heads down on the ground instead of up in the stars. 

Sulu's eyes widened, but he rallied quickly: "So why _did_ you join?"

"Because." Chekov paused, spread his arms helplessly, feeling hot. He hated explaining, hated Sulu's implacable cool. "Because I wanted to make a difference—you can't tell me you do that with that _game_."

"I saved Earth already," Sulu said, bone dry.

Chekov started to blush, and hated it. "So what do you care about anything, then?"

"Have you made a difference yet, Chekov?"

Chekov glared at him, started to cross his arms and then refused to let himself.

"Because you can," Sulu said, the way he said everything—aloof, mocking, daring you to compete with him.

"With what—a _game_?"

"You can't just watch from the outside and figure out what's going on, Chekov. Eventually, you're going to have to pick a side and get on the arena."

"I picked a side!" Chekov shouted, ready to tear his hair out. "I picked Starfleet!"

This, of all things, made Sulu narrow his eyes. "You mean Harrison."

He hadn't chosen Harrison, he wanted to say. 

"I'm sorry," he said, because he couldn't say anything else.

"Yeah," Sulu said. "Me too."

\+ + +

Summer was almost over. 

The heat lingered, enough that the tourists and leave numbers had dipped, and the locals took their own vacations to exotic chilly locales.

Chekov was starting to really worry.

The _Enterprise_ problem remained unsolved—Harrison remained unsolved. Every time he saw him, he wanted more. Every time he thought about McCoy, he felt more guilt. He hadn't seen him alone since he'd tricked him into talking to Kirk, knew that McCoy was avoiding him because of it. He wanted to see McCoy, didn't know what he'd say if he did.

Kirk had found him on the pier that evening, as the light faded and the heat lingered. Chekov was sitting on the pier, feet in the water. Kirk joined him, his unscuffed loafers in one hand as he sat, kicked aimlessly for long moments.

It was so easy to sit next to Kirk and let the worry seep out of him, like the summer would last forever. Kirk seemed to carry summer with him wherever he went. He was nova bright, could take over a room from the doorway. When he slapped his heavy hand on Chekov's shoulder, Chekov felt stronger—like he could lift anything, go anywhere, pull the trigger.

"So have you worked it out with Dr. McCoy?"

Kirk turned, lids lowered sleepily but eyes sharp underneath. "What have you heard?"

Chekov frowned, unsure what Kirk meant. "Why was he so angry?"

Kirk sighed, stared down at his feet in the water. For once, Chekov felt older than him, looking at him curled over himself like a boy.

Kirk said: "You learned about the Kelvin incident in school, right?"

"Of course," Chekov said, annoyed at the digression, at the stupid question, at the fact that the closer he came to the truth, the more people pushed him away.

"You remember who the captain was?"

"Richard Robau was the Federation captain, and Lucius Domitius Nero the Romulan one."

Kirk dipped his head. "Good answer, serves me right. But after Robau died, it was my father, George Kirk."

Chekov blinked. "Are you certain?"

He had never heard of George Kirk.

"Pretty sure," Kirk said, wry. "Not that you'd find him on the records. Starfleet wound up cleaning up a few of the details after Marcus brought Harrison back—the first time they started sweeping stuff under the carpet for their image. He'd sacrificed himself for the ship, and Starfleet was trying to get people to take lives to save people, not give them."

Chekov had heard stories like this growing up—about his father, and his mother, and his aunts and uncles and every brilliant Russian inventor history had neglected. Always, their shining brilliance when worlds had needed them most. Always forgotten, except by the cursed few, who had to spend their lives reminding people that it had been a Russian who'd invented quadrotriticale.

Chekov rolled his eyes.

Kirk laughed, rueful. "Yeah, I get that a lot. It's hard to believe things people can't see for themselves. But I believed it, and it got me to Starfleet—eventually. Some people in Starfleet still remembered him, not that they'd admit it."

Chekov chose not to comment. "And that's where you met Doctor McCoy."

"We were roommates from the second year on. When Nero showed up again, he was the one who got me onto the Enterprise."

"You were there?"

"For a split second. I thought I knew what I was doing, hard enough to argue with the captain— _acting_ captain, Spock. He had me thrown out of the ship, and then Harrison had me thrown out of Starfleet as soon as he came back."

"For mutiny."

Kirk looked at him sideways. "You sound like him."

That would explain why the records had been erased—mutiny on the fleet's jewel, under the nose of the most powerful man in the Federation, would have been publicity they could not afford after the blow of Vulcan's loss.

"Are you still angry at Mr. Spock?"

Kirk huffed a laugh. "I still think he was wrong—I'm sure he still thinks I'm an idiot."

"And what about McCoy?"

Chekov did not ask about Harrison. 

"I'm sure he thinks I'm an idiot too."

"Is that why you came here?"

Kirk had built the most opulent house on the planet, threw parties that would have bankrupted whole cities—all to what, convince McCoy to come back to him?

And then what? Kirk had seemed almost completely unprepared for McCoy—the parties all wrong, the fruit all wrong, his silence in the cabin.

"He thinks that I left him," Kirk said, staring out over the water, across the bay to the yellow house on the far shore. "I did—I had to. Bones played it safe—I don't blame him for that. What else was he going to do, get banished with me? I had to do it, and he had to stay."

He sighed then—seemed older when Chekov looked over at him. There was a weight on him Chekov had never noticed before, faded scars on his face.

"But it doesn't matter anymore. I've come back, and I've undone all of the things that I did, and this time they can't throw me out."

"What do you think is going to happen?" If Harrison had been the one to throw him out, then the decision wouldn't be reversed lightly. The last time Harrison had been angry, it had been when his crew, still safely comatose in their pods, had been threatened. It had been early on, before Chekov was born, when the Kelvin had been fresh on everyone's mind, and Harrison had only recently been found, awakened, and risen to power. The Combat Exam and Harrison's other measures still seemed up for debate. 

The perpetrators had been destroyed, their fragments left to orbit the planet as a perpetual warning.

Chekov shuddered to think what would happen now.

Kirk said, "I won't let anything happen to you."

"That's not what I meant," Chekov said, irritated at Kirk's casual tone, his arrogance.

"No, you didn't. You wanted to help me. You did help me, Chekov—with McCoy—and I'm grateful."

 _I didn't do it for you_ , Chekov thought but didn't say.

"There's a lot I need help with, Chekov, if you're still willing."

"What are you going to do?" Chekov was never more frustrated than when people refused to listen to him. "No, don't tell me. Whatever it is, Harrison is going to find out."

"You think he doesn't know?"

Chekov goggled. "You think he doesn't care, if he does?"

Kirk snorted. "Oh, he definitely cares—but he'll bide his time for the right moment, and I've got until then to figure it out."

"When will that be?"

"You heard about how Admiral Marcus intends to make a stop on Risa soon, right? Official business is that he's visiting his daughter for her birthday, but good money says he's after news of the _Enterprise_. I'm betting Harrison will wait until then."

"You're _betting_?"

"I've got a plan, Chekov. What I need are people I can trust."

"And what, you don't think you can trust me?" His accent was thickening with anger, and he couldn't stop waving his hands.

"Of course I trust you, Chekov." But then he stopped speaking, abruptly, seemed to be holding his breath.

 _But_ , Kirk wasn't saying. _But you're not strong enough, Pavel. But you're not one of us._

_But you had your chance and you didn't take it._

"So _tell_ me, then—what are you going to do? What do you _want_ with all of this?"

"I—" For the first time since Chekov had met him, Kirk seemed to be struggling with what to say. He gestured helplessly. "All I want is for things to go back to the way they were."

Chekov sighed, anger suddenly punctured. He understood, felt the longing behind Kirk's tone and knew it to be his own. How much he had wished he could have joined Starfleet before the Combat Exam existed, before he had to be willing to take a life to join the fleet. How much he wished Harrison had never been found, even if it meant he had to float in a dreamless sleep for all eternity.

He wished he'd never brought McCoy to Kirk—sometimes, that he'd been alone when he invited McCoy that day.

When he spoke, it was with a small voice: "You can't just bring back the past."

Kirk's lips quirked. "I wish that were true."

\+ + +

Three days later, Chekov sat down in the shade outside the cottage to read, couldn't concentrate. He reread the same lines over and over, listened to the waves, to the drugged hum of the bees in the trees with a thousand fruits. He kept thinking about Kirk's house.

It was different in the light, without people and music. Compared to them, the house had seemed palatial but traditional, sturdy enough to weather a thousand pleasures. Now, alone, Chekov could appreciate how alien it was. The house was built on old Risan dictates, used to earthquakes and tsunamis. It was elastic, wavered with the tides all the way down to the thick slabs of Risan basalt along the base.

The house breathed.

Something flashed at the edge of his vision—a lightning bug. They winked thickly in the setting sun.

The cicadas hummed in the trees, invisible but insistent.

He hadn't realized he'd been in the shade so long.

Kirk had said he had a plan, but he hadn't said what it was.

Kirk had said: _I've undone all the things that I did._

He had come back to McCoy, certainly—but he hadn't undone anything. McCoy still lived in the house across the bay. If Kirk was planning to do something about it, he hadn't yet.

And he hadn't come back to Starfleet.

Chekov searched again on his PADD, just to make sure: Kirk still wasn't listed as having ever attended Starfleet, and he certainly wasn't on the public list of the former crew of the Enterprise. The captain's logs from the _Enterprise_ during the time of the Narada incident, where his expulsion would have been recorded, had not been made available.

It could be Spock. Spock had never mentioned making up with Kirk—had never mentioned him at all, but he wouldn't be the person who did. But Kirk had discussed him as if he hadn't spoken to him since.

Chekov wanted desperately to ask Spock about it, or Nyota, or anyone else who had been on the Enterprise. But both of their locations were still listed as classified.

Sulu must have known, had admitted he'd known Kirk, had never said how. Kirk must have made it up to him, explained what happened. It would be a lot to have Sulu as a friend again, when you had lost him.

But that didn't seem like enough. Even the house didn't seem like enough, suddenly, not even with the parties, the trees and the guest list. Because it wasn't enough to Kirk. Kirk didn't care about the house, about the parties, and he'd never lost them in the first place. 

He'd said he had a plan.

He said he'd needed people he could trust—but not Chekov.

What couldn't Chekov be trusted with?

Kirk had said he wanted things back the way they were before.

What had he undone?

Chekov froze suddenly, gasped like he'd been struck—a wheezing noise, a break in the placid bay. He felt adrenaline flood through him, made him flush hot then cold. His hands were shaking.

All this time, all of this work, and it had been right under his nose.

Jim Kirk had stolen the _Enterprise_.


	4. Chapter 4

Kirk's hovercraft was parked outside, and the door to his house was open—not just unlocked, but waving in the breeze. Chekov pushed inside blindly, dashed along the hallway, running through the empty hall, the echoing ballroom. There, he paused, unsure—the house was breathing around him, empty and oppressive. 

From down the hallway, he heard a noise. 

He followed it. He wanted to shout, could barely breathe, wanted to somehow catch Kirk in the act, as if he'd find Kirk holding the _Enterprise_ in his hands. He came to the door and finally slowed, quieted his breath. He pushed the door open one horrible sliver and peered through.

They lay sprawled on the bed, facing him—as if they had been waiting for him. But they never noticed, alone in their own world. McCoy was belly down, face half hidden by the rucked up sheets. Kirk was holding him down: one hand in his dark hair, the other clamped down on his arm.

McCoy's hands were thick veined with effort as he clutched the sheets, rocking all the way up to his shoulders with Kirk's every thrust.

As Chekov watched Kirk smoothed his hand through McCoy's hair—soothing—slid it down his face as he fell forward against the sleek expanse of McCoy's back. He kissed McCoy's spine, bit it—McCoy's mouth opened, a wet red gasping gash on his face. McCoy looked boyish, delirious, as if this was the first time they had ever touched.

Was this where they had gone, that first afternoon when they had disappeared? Was this what they had done—had been doing all that time?

McCoy looked down, eyes narrowed to the thick dark fringe of his lashes as he stared at Kirk's other hand, hooked under McCoy's armpit and over his shoulder. Kirk was holding him close as he fucked McCoy open, his stomach a wall of muscle on top of him, narrow hips smacking against McCoy's taut ass. McCoy clenched every time Kirk shoved forward, but Kirk fucked through it relentlessly, hitching McCoy's thighs wider with every dirty shove.

Kirk's head dropped against McCoy's freckled shoulder, his blonde hair gone dark with sweat. He covered McCoy's hot red mouth with his hand, shuddered as McCoy kissed and bit or maybe whispered, jaw working as he sucked and swallowed aimlessly. McCoy's eyes were closed as Kirk's tightened his grip on his face, turned his head so he could press his mouth against McCoy's muzzled cheek and brace his left hand against the base of McCoy's throat, below the hammer of his pulse. 

McCoy was grimacing with delight, face a breathless red. He lowed against Kirk's salty spit slick hand, louder and more plaintive than Kirk's loving huffs.

Chekov would never have covered his mouth like that.

He closed the door quietly, but it didn't matter.

\+ + +

Chekov ran to his bike, sped off into the furious dusk.

McCoy had lapped at Kirk's hand with such abandon—had Kirk told him to, some whispered order Chekov couldn't hear? 

Or had Kirk slowly trained him to it, hours beginning with that afternoon in the cottage after Chekov had left—had McCoy had dropped to his knees and sucked Kirk's cock until the sun finally winked out? Kirk had had all summer to make McCoy his, all summer to turn him into the beautiful relentless animal he'd been, desperate for more with a cock up his ass and a man pinning him down. He'd been so grateful even for a hand to lick.

Or maybe Kirk didn't have to do anything. Chekov wondered cruelly if anyone could have done it, bent McCoy over and reamed him the way he wanted. Chekov could have done it, ordered him down onto his knees in the and fucked his tight throat until McCoy looked up at him with his wide eyes colorless in the dark. Chekov would have been kind to him, kinder than Kirk, only petted his soft thick hair—never yanked on him, never choked him until his throat bulged obscenely with Chekov's cock, hands twisted pleading into Chekov's shirt.

But McCoy hadn't wanted that.

Chekov had arrived at his house.

Not McCoy's house—it was meant to be, tried to be, had been planned down to its first bricks to be McCoy's house, with its Terran orchards and its plush carpets and its skylights where the light streamed in, all made for a man who hated the stars, who freckled in the sun. But the house was too big, too empty—when the sun set it was only a lifeless shell, a perfect facsimile of a home. McCoy must have hated it from the very first.

How hard Harrison had tried; how completely he had failed.

The door was open.

Harrison was waiting for him in the shooting range, was running his hands along the sleek leather briefcase of the rifle. That was something's _skin_ , Chekov wanted to tell him, disgusted. But leather was another barbaric practice of the past—Harrison fit in with it. He held it so loosely in his large hands.

"You smell like them," Harrison said.

"I hate them."

It wasn't an admission—had come out of Chekov as soon as he thought it, for the first time. But Harrison's whole face darkened, as if he had been waiting for Chekov to say it for months, had seen it lurking in his mouth. 

He moved faster than Chekov could follow, held his face with his long-fingered hands and kissed him—hot, trembling with restraint. Harrison's hard hands on Chekov's throat made him dizzy, light-headed.

He pulled away, only to pick Chekov up and carry him into the house. He moved fast—too fast for Chekov to follow, and Chekov staggered when Harrison put him down in what turned out to be a bedroom. It was worse than Galartha, worse than weightlessness—here was gravity, holding him down, and here was Harrison ignoring it.

Harrison threw him on the bed and started to strip.

Chekov wanted his clothes off too—his cock was aching against them, had been since—

Harrison was strong, taller than he was, than humans were, pale with power Chekov would never have. He pulled his clothes off too fast, found Harrison over him as he pulled his shirt away from his face, pushing his thighs apart so he could kneel between them on the bed, taking Chekov's cock in his hand. It felt amazing, had Chekov thrust up immediately, blindly, reaching out.

Harrison batted his hands out of the way, leaned over the bed and pulled lubricant out of the bedside table.

Chekov had never done this before but he could imagine it—didn't have to imagine it, remembered McCoy's face and wondered how often Harrison had made him look that way. They had fucked in this house, in this bed, and now McCoy was gone and he was here.

Harrison's hand on his cock felt so good. His other hand, wet with lube, slipped lower, and Chekov groaned at the feeling of Harrison's fingertips circling his asshole, slipping inside.

He thought about McCoy coming back—about being discovered.

Harrison said, so low Chekov could feel it through his hands: "They're not thinking about you? Why are you thinking about them?"

"I'm not," Chekov said, and belatedly realized it was in Russian—because Harrison had spoken in Russian. He spoke Chekov's language, was maybe the only man on the planet who did.

In answer, Harrison pushed his fingers inside, slid over a hot spot inside him that had Chekov shaking—and then he really wasn't thinking of them, of anything else. He blinked, dazed, when Harrison pulled his hands away, watched him slick up his cock and grab his thighs as if in a dream.

 _Wait_ , Chekov wanted to say—but he was so tired of waiting, he hated waiting. He pulled Harrison in closer, shouted when Harrison pushed in and pulled him in closer. It hurt, it felt amazing, Harrison could kill him so easily but he wasn't, he wasn't—he was pressing in slow, relentless, pinned Chekov to the bed like a butterfly.

Harrison had one arm under the small of Chekov's back, holding his hips close. The other curled up over Chekov's head, tangled in his hair. This close, panting, he was fever hot, made Chekov thrash whenever he pressed too close for too long, made him pull him in closer.

"Harder," Chekov begged—wanting to forget, to feel nothing, not guilt or rabid jealousy, wanted it so rough he didn't want it anymore.

But all that happened was that he came in blinding streaks, pulling Harrison in closer, thrusting up into his hand.

Afterwards, Harrison breathed silently next to him, but Chekov could see his ribs inflate. They went too far now, too much breath in them for a mortal body.

\+ + +

Harrison was already awake when Chekov woke up, unruffled as if he'd never slept.

"I knew you'd figure it out."

Chekov rolled up, the adrenaline of the previous day flooding back. "Do you know where it is?"

"No," Harrison said simply, and waited.

The same puzzle with no answer: where was the ship, if it wasn't anywhere?

Even though it was impossible, the only answer Chekov was left with was: it wasn't anywhere.

The ship was planetside. Without its systems running, the ship would be impossible to locate.

But where? The only possible way a ship could take off was if it could launch itself into sudden freefall, high enough to give it time to start, with a strong counter wind to slow its fall.

Then, as if someone had whispered in his ear: the Cliffs of Arlaya.

Chekov had been so close—Kirk had _taken_ him so close, had to have known what he was on Risa to do, had dangled the ship in front of him almost close enough to smell.

How cruel Kirk was, underneath his smile.

He looked up, found Harrison smiling at him in turn—one sleek line that cut his face, said that they shared a secret.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Chekov's voice was hoarse, his throat still sore.

"There were things you didn't tell me," Harrison said coolly—but then, low, "I wasn't sure if Kirk had gotten to you. He's been recruiting since he got here."

Chekov opened his mouth, then closed it.

Kirk had thrown the biggest, most exclusive parties on the planet. No one would have noticed in the crowd of beautiful, brilliant bodies, that Kirk was hunting down the head of every sector of Starfleet.

"He never—" Chekov pulled his hair. "None of them ever…"

Not any of them—not Kirk, not Sulu, not McCoy.

"They already had a navigator," Harrison explained.

 _Who_ , Chekov almost asked, and then realized: _Darwin_.

There had never been any tip about the Romulan war—easy enough to fake information with an investigation that had no paper trail.

She must have laughed at every meeting, when he had nothing to report.

"All of this to what—to make a fool of Starfleet? Of you?"

"Kirk has been bitter ever since his manifest destiny was taken away from him," Harrison said, in the same deep, flat tone he always used, like an unrippled ocean. "He considers it his personal vendetta to eliminate the man who removed him from Starfleet."

"Wasn't it you?" Harrison had been the one to take over the captaincy of the Enterprise, to banish Kirk forever.

"I was responsible for his original suspension, yes," Harrison said. "But the one who made it permanent was Admiral Marcus."

_Marcus._

"The party." Another latch shuddered closed in his mind—why Dr. Marcus had wanted everyone there, why she had been so insistent. She was in on it— _everyone_ was in on it. And anyone who wasn't—him—was there for what? Cover for why the rebels would be gathered in one place?

 _Jim's never been one for small gestures,_ he remembered Sulu saying.

And Kirk himself: _It's hard to believe things people can't see for themselves._

"He wants an audience," Harrison explained—as if reading Chekov's mind.

"For what?" Even now, it was hard to imagine Kirk attacking the fleet.

"He stole the most powerful ship in the fleet, Pavel," Harrison reminded him. "And he's been recruiting our best soldiers out from under our noses. He'll show up at that party with open arms, make an impossible demand, and when it doesn't work... He'll become dramatic."

Chekov remembered the acrobat on the wire, the splattered acid, the poisonous fruit.

"What do we do?" he asked, helpless.

Harrison's serene expression never wavered. "I want an audience, too."

\+ + +

Carol Marcus's party was unlike anything Chekov had seen before.

The _Invention_ had been transformed—gone were the sleek white and chrome walls, the simplicity of uniforms in primary colors. The entire ship had been transformed into a gleaming euphoric animal, its sides pulsing with golden holograms. The walls swam, swelled, and rippling swirls of frothy cream and seafoam spilled along the floor. The gravity had been adjusted so delicately that everyone who stepped onto the ship felt as weightless as champagne. The guests had dressed extravagantly, made even their dress blues sparkle with golden accents. It wasn't anywhere—it was everywhere, it was a gleaming fantasy.

It seemed like everyone from the Federation had come. Chekov had been expecting all of Kirk's followers to show up, and the floor was indeed littered with brilliant standouts from every sector in Starfleet. But a number of heads of state had come, counsel members from all branches of the Federation, lured no doubt by Dr. Marcus and her father's high position—Kirk's audience for when the time came, potentially his hostages.

At the center of it all was Carol Marcus herself, resplendent in white. Chapel was by her side, a vision in blue.

It was everything Harrison had predicted.

"He's going to lie," Harrison had explained. "It won't be enough for him to have the ship, or even all of the people he has on his side. He needs to discredit everything Starfleet stands for. He'll claim that Admiral Marcus is agitating for war, come up with some conspiracy theory that Marcus has secretly been testing fabulous weapons."

"What can we do?" Chekov had asked. They had been standing in the depths of Harrison's house, in the pale courtyard, seemingly their only refuge from the sticky heat of the planet.

Harrison had pulled out the ancient leather briefcase that stored the _SS Vintorez_ , assembled it easily while Chekov watched. "Our primary objective is to prevent Kirk and the others from using the _Enterprise_ to either attack or escape: we need to sabotage both the warp core and its weapons systems. The ship will wait to appear until Kirk has begun to make his demands, so we'll need to get aboard as soon as it's detected."

"And then?"

Harrison disassembled the rifle again mechanically. Chekov felt like the rifle—deadly, pulled apart. "We need to make sure the ship can't hurt anyone. I know how to do it, although it will be difficult. I'll need you to make sure I'm not interrupted."

He handed Chekov the briefcase. "Security won't recognize any of the components as a weapon—gunpowder hasn't been used for centuries, but they're just as effective."

Chekov had frowned. If Kirk had an entire ship, then this roaring ancient thing couldn't do anything against it. He might as well shake a match at the darkness.

But Harrison had insisted, his gimlet eyes softening. "I need to know you're safe."

Chekov had given in. "But what about you? Are you going to take a weapon?"

Harrison had smiled—not unkindly. "Pavel, I am a weapon."

He had dressed not in his dress blues, but in his uniform. No one seemed surprised by his informality. They expected it of him, Chekov realized—who would put a bow on a phaser?

He clutched the briefcase tighter, felt its leather handle creak.

Harrison turned at the noise, smiled when he saw his expression.

"I feel underdressed," Chekov said, to distract him from his real fears. He had worn a simple gray suit with Risan canvas details that looked enough like leather to distract viewers from the briefcase.

"Your hair is gold enough," Harrison said, and stroked down the side of his head, rested his large hand under the side of Chekov's jaw.

Chekov blinked, shocked at Harrison saying such a thing in public. Even with things as they were now, McCoy would be here, heads of state who'd look askance.

Harrison's eyes were shining, flickering in the playful light of the party. "Even now, you have no idea how beautiful you are."

Chekov shivered, couldn't help basking in the praise. Harrison's words buzzed through his bones, vibrated hot enough to warm his skin. He wanted to be bold, suddenly, as bold as Kirk, and pull Harrison toward in. Kiss him right there. When had he become so desperate for it?

"John, good to see you." It was Admiral Marcus himself, still in his dress blues and surrounded by a crowd of followers.

Chekov straightened, but it was unnecessary. Marcus barely glanced at him, and none of his crowd of hangers on seemed remotely interested. Chekov was momentarily shocked when Harrison didn't mention him, until he realized why: Harrison had counted on his invisibility, one more cover for the rifle.

"Admiral Marcus," Harrison replied, with a slight nod. "Always a pleasure. In addition to her many other accomplishments, your daughter plans a splendid party."

"She had help."

They turned as one at the new voice behind them. Chekov turned too, caught up in the movement, even though he knew who he'd find—didn't want to find them.

It was Kirk—and behind him, McCoy. Chekov had expected that, had steeled himself to see them again. But he was unprepared for the sight of Spock and Uhura, standing straight as blades next to them.

When had Kirk gotten to them? Before they had disappeared? After?

It didn't matter anymore.

Kirk stood relaxed before them, arms crossed casually, radiating satisfaction. 

Once, Chekov would have stepped closer, eager to get what scraps of it he could.

"I can't let her take _all_ the credit for this," Kirk said, unfazed by the glares. Spock and Uhura had straightened, one unified wall behind Kirk—although Chekov thought he saw Spock's gaze flick over to him for one split second.

"How pleasant to see you taking some responsibility for your actions," Harrison said archly.

He hadn't looked at McCoy yet, who stood with his hands clenched, shoulders tensed. He was wearing green again. Chekov remembered the first time they had met. McCoy had been so gentle then. But maybe he wasn't, deep down.

He had passed the Combat Exam, the same as the rest of them.

"Why are you here, Kirk?" Marcus growled.

Kirk smiled, the kind that said he'd been waiting for a cue. " _We're_ here, Admiral Marcus, to testify."

\+ + +

"People of the Federation," Carol Marcus began, "I have gathered you here today as a people's tribunal, to present you with evidence that both Captain John Harrison and Admiral Alexander Marcus have committed war crimes, and violated Starfleet's most basic tenets."

"We have gathered a quorum of the Federation Council as required," Spock said beside her. "Members of the Council, I hope you will excuse the interruption to the night's proceedings. We would not have staged this deception without cause; as you can see, the subject of this tribunal is of the utmost gravity, and we knew that neither Admiral Marcus nor Captain John Harrison would otherwise agree to this court."

"I still don't," Admiral Marcus snapped, but made no move to resist. He must have known all along—just like Harrison, like everyone. He had even dismissed his entourage as the proceedings began, and they had all immediately disappeared. He seemed smaller by himself.

"Feel free to keep sipping champagne," Kirk added. Then he began more seriously, "We first accuse Captain Harrison of violating Starfleet protocol and Federation law. While in command of the _USS Enterprise_ , he had crippled the Romulan mining craft _Narada_. Although the _Narada_ posed no threat—and, by the way, still had the _Enterprise_ 's previous captain, Christopher Pike, captured aboard—Captain Harrison chose to fire at the vessel, destroying the ship and its passengers without opportunity for surrender.

"I've interviewed almost every bridge crew member from that day," Kirk continued, "And they all said the same thing: that Captain Harrison fired at the _Narada_ and ignited the interplanetary weapon there, condemning the entire ship to be consumed in a black hole."

"What evidence do you have, Kirk?" Harrison asked—bored, impatient, as though he knew the answer already. "Hearsay proves nothing."

"Yes," Kirk agreed, "Which is why I got the logs, straight from the _Enterprise_ itself."

"And so you see your claims are worthless," Harrison insisted calmly. "As you have just admitted to committing treason against the Federation by stealing the _USS Enterprise_."

"Oh no, not treason," Kirk said. His voice had gone low, but still it carried through the muted halls of the sparkling ship. "It was mutiny."

A murmur went the crowd, who had stood in stunned silence until now.

Harrison's expression never changed.

"What are you talking about," Admiral Marcus snapped. " _You_ were dishonorably discharged from the _Enterprise_ , and mutiny doesn't change a damn thing anyway."

"It does if it was justified," Kirk answered, matching Marcus's rage with smug calm. "Starfleet protocol states that a ship may be forcibly removed from a Captain's command by the crew if he has been deemed unfit and has not surrendered the vessel. Harrison was still captain of the _Enterprise_ when it was taken."

"You're not the crew," Harrison pointed out.

Chekov held onto that. They were all standing together, across the vast expanse of the ballroom, but they weren't crew. _He_ was.

"But I am," Uhura answered, stepping forward. "The co-option of the ship was done under my command. I had copied the logs of the bridge officers, as well as the security footage showing Captain Harrison's treatment of the _Narada_ on the _Enterprise_ 's dilithium crystal with a quantum encryption. The official records had been first sealed and then destroyed under Admiral Marcus, and so only the copy on the ship remained. When Jim reached out to me, I was the one who orchestrated the takeover."

She had left while they were still on New Vulcan together—was that where she had gone? Had she known even then? Had Spock?

"Yes," Kirk said, with a nod in Uhura's direction, as if to confirm all his fears. "And then I _forced_ Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott to—"

"Oh, psh, like you could. I did it myself."

"Scotty—"

"You can't save me, you blonde bastard, and you certainly won't take all the credit for yourself. Let the record—er, if there's a record, I hope someone is recording—let it show that I, Scotty, did the actual stealing of the USS Enterprise all by myself, with only a little help from this wee man, a touch from this gentleman, and absolutely none from that numpty."

He gestured at a short green person, who straightened when he was mentioned, at an elderly Vulcan who stared at them all impassively—and Kirk, who shrugged.

"Do you have the logs?" This was a new voice—a woman at the front of the crowd, surely a member of the council.

"If you'll direct your attention to the screens," Carol answered.

On all sides the footage began to play—security recordings from the bridge. Harrison stood like a lighthouse at the center of the bridge, hands clasped behind his back, unruffled even as the ship showed clear signs of battle. The rest of the bridge crew had gathered tensely around him. McCoy was not there, but Spock was standing next to Harrison, and Uhura and Sulu were plainly visible. As the crowd watched, John ordered the photon torpedoes fired—a shot which would send the _Narada_ hurdling into a black hole.

Chekov watched the navigator press the button that condemned his own former captain to death.

It should have been him.

"Ensign Kyle McKenna is the only member of the bridge crew who is not with us today," Kirk said. "He committed suicide a week after the _Enterprise_ returned to port."

"This is serious evidence," said the same councilwoman who had spoken before, "But you've yet to explain why it was justified for you to commandeer the ship. Captain Harrison has not been declared unfit by his superiors."

"But he was," Kirk said, "By the only crewmember with the authority to decide—the _Enterprise_ 's Chief Medical Officer."

Chekov turned, like the rest of the crowd, to McCoy. He stood tense under the spotlight, all but gritted out, "I submitted my report to that effect almost a year ago—it went ignored by the brass, no surprise there. It had nothing to do with this, though." He nodded stiffly at the screen. "I had been in contact with Dr. Marcus about her own findings on Project Genesis. It seemed clear from what she showed me that John—that _Captain Harrison_ intended, with Admiral Marcus, to use that research to fuel a new war with the Romulans, if not worse. He'd already begun to discuss a new campaign, whose flagship was the _Enterprise_. I was formally slated to be its CMO, and I registered my concerns as such. Harrison displayed a vengeful temperament, at odds with Starfleet's mission and a captain's duties. I hoped, I guess, that the issue was a medical one."

He trailed off uncharacteristically, refusing to look at anyone.

"Project Genesis," the councilwoman prompted.

"My research." Carol took the floor. "Initially, it was intended to terraform uninhabitable planets. Despite initial success, the project had proved to be unstable, and had been terminated. But when I had recently reviewed its findings, I saw that Admiral Marcus had ordered the project to be restarted—this time, as a weapon of mass destruction."

The documents flickered up to the walls now: Marcus's signature over and over again, the language bold and damning.

As one the crowd stared up at them, and then in a wave turned back to Marcus.

"Ridiculous," Marcus sneered. He was clearly furious—he hadn't known about his daughter's involvement, Chekov realized, or that they might come after him in addition to Harrison. Marcus's face was twisted, head low, as he growled, "This kangaroo court has gone on long enough. I've sent my men to take immediate control of this ship, and all of you are under arrest, with further investigations pending once you have returned the _Enterprise_."

"Oh, but I already have," Kirk said, finally giving into a grin so wide it split his face. "Scotty, the lights, please."

The holograms abruptly shut off. In the sudden resulting shock of white and chrome, Chekov realized that this was indeed not the ship he had explored only weeks before with Harrison. It was of similar dimensions, but larger, more brilliant, light bursting from every corner.

He was standing on the _Enterprise_.

That was when the gravity shut off.

\+ + +

Chaos sprang up along with everyone's flimsy high heels. 

Marcus had clearly been waiting for it, seized the moment to spring towards the hall, where the Kelvin pods lay. Harrison leapt in the other direction, inwards towards the heart of the ship. Kirk and Spock leapt after him, while the rest of the crew struggled to get their bearings. Chekov adjusted quickly; Harrison had prepared him for this too. He swam as quickly as he could past the throngs of guests, all shouting and desperately scrabbling for purchase, and made his way laboriously where the three men had gone.

A few hallways down, he found a closed door.

The lock had been destroyed, shot to malfunction and open—after which the failsafes had kicked in and it had closed. Nothing would open it now except from the inside.

Chekov opened the briefcase.

The rifle was difficult to assemble with no gravity, and he had only just managed when more of Kirk's crew found him: Gaila, Uhura, and McCoy.

The gravity returned with a sudden lurch.

Screams abounded from the central hall, where most of the guests still remained, while the four of them struggled to get their bearings. Chekov held the gun in one hand, and was leaning against a railing that was the only thing that prevented him from collapsing across the hall. The ship was falling, the gravity pulling not towards the ship's core but to the planet below. The other three held on to other railings across the hallway, scrabbling to find a way across.

"Don't come any closer," Chekov warned, but couldn't bring himself to raise his gun—not at them. "You have the ship already, what else do you want?"

"It's not about the damned ship, Chekov, that's not what Jim's trying to do," McCoy shouted over the roar echoing out over the halls.

"So what, then, this was all for you?" Chekov didn't look at McCoy, couldn't. But he could feel McCoy, at the corner of his vision.

"It wasn't just that, Chekov, I promise. It was everyone, the whole crew."

"I _know_ that." Chekov was crying, and hated that he was crying, and hated that he couldn't stop. He hated them. 

Everyone had known but him.

"Chekov," Uhura insisted, "We're your friends."

"You are _not_!" Chekov finally gave in to the shout that had been building for months. "You've done nothing but lie to me since this mission started!"

"We thought you'd gone over to Harrison's side," Uhura yelled. She was the closest to him so far, clambering tenaciously through the railing.

"All I wanted was to be on your side!"

"Then why didn't you say so?" McCoy bellowed, louder than Chekov had ever heard. He looked, despite himself, found McCoy red-faced and heaving by the doorway, clinging tightly. "We kept asking and it was always Harrison! You always chose Harrison!"

"I only went to him because I couldn't have you!"

Chekov turned away, furious. There it was, the bald, awful truth—it was the _Enterprise_ , and Kirk's plot against Starfleet, and all the rest of them. But it was McCoy, deep down.

And now they all knew.

But then Gaila said, "Harrison tried to kill Dr. McCoy."

"Shut up," Chekov said savagely, saw McCoy jerk at the corner of his vision and didn't care. "He saved McCoy!"

"No, Chekov," Gaila insisted. "You did."

Chekov gripped the rifle even tighter. "What are you talking about?"

"Harrison knew McCoy was going to betray him," Gaila said quickly, "And he figured out that if anyone was going to fly the _Enterprise_ , it'd be Sulu. He messed up the fields and made sure McCoy was there."

"Harrison only went after them after you already had," Uhura cut in. "Didn't you wonder about that? He only went because you forced his hand. You showed everyone it could be done, so he had no excuse not to."

"I couldn't tell you," Gaila picked up seamlessly. "I'm sorry, Chekov—we knew, but we couldn't go after him until the right time, and he was on you like a hawk after that."

Harrison had been the one who sabotaged the field. Chekov tested the theory like a loose tooth.

It had never made sense that the field malfunctioned with no cause, even with Sulu's modified bike. Harrison would have been able to figure out exactly which field to manipulate—not only how the field's algorithms worked, but how Sulu would be flying, could anticipate machines and men with equal ease. He had known the wound it would cause, he had known McCoy would try to help. He had planned to be there—seconds too late, of course, even with his superhuman strength and intelligence.

Chekov had disrupted his agenda.

"I'm sorry none of us told you, Pavel," McCoy said. "You deserved better."

He sagged against the doorway, then, no longer trying to reach him. 

Uhura opened her mouth to speak, but any words were drowned out by the sudden whining whir of the door. Harrison had forced it open, staggered in. He seemed taller than ever, even hunched over as he was. His hair fell dark and lank around his eyes. One spatter of green blood decorated his uniform.

Only a few feet behind him, Kirk lurched toward the door. His mouth was bleeding, and he was holding his arm awkwardly at his side. He stared at Harrison, then out at them all. Where only minutes before he had been overflowing at the seams, near bursting with beaming energy, now he had collapsed, skin waxy and green. He was so much smaller than Chekov had ever realized, so much more distant.

As Harrison noticed Chekov, he smiled—a triumphant smile, eyes gleaming. Whatever had happened behind that door, they had won. Everything he promised had come true—Kirk's grandiose plan, his threat, the _Enterprise_. And everything he promised was going to come true—Chekov earning his place in the stars, a Federation ship under Chekov's guiding hand, the trigger under Chekov's finger.

The two of them were standing right before him. Kirk was clearly exhausted, stood panting, trying to catch his breath. But Harrison—Harrison was waiting. Harrison had taken him here, had opened the door because he had known Chekov would be waiting. He had known Chekov had the gun, that he wouldn't make the same mistake again.

Chekov fired.

Harrison fell silently, a single hole in his chest. Chekov watched him twitch through the frail black cross of the scope, until he lay still.

Chekov looked at McCoy and said: "So did you."

The bullet had been stopped by the implacable chrome walls of the ship, but the noise echoed. It was Kirk who moved first as it died, staggering away and saying only, "Spock."

The rest of them climbed up to the body.

Chekov looked at McCoy instead. He stood haunted.

The silence stretched out endlessly.

Gaila's communicator chirped. It was Sulu: "It was pretty close, but we'll be able to land. We've got Marcus's men under control, finally, although Marcus is gone. The ship has been stabilized. Whatever you all did, it worked."

Chekov felt the weight of their eyes on him, even though the rifle felt weightless in his hands.

And then another figure staggered through the doorway. 

It was Scotty, his round face small and frail in the light. Spock was half-slung across his shoulders, limping heavily.

Scotty said: "Jim is dead."

\+ + +

It all fell apart quickly after that.

Admiral Marcus had fled, taking with him the rest of Harrison's still frozen crew, as well as a small coterie of officials and a larger group of loyal followers. The council had declared him officially wanted for trial, and had seized all work on Genesis. Harrison's acts had all been repealed, including the Combat Exam. Even the Kobayashi Maru was under fire for encouraging a life-or-death mentality.

The _Enterprise_ had been reinstated as an active ship, and given a new five-year mission to embark on as soon as it and its crew had been repaired.

"It's bullshit," Sulu said glibly. He, Uhura, and Chekov were all sitting by Spock's bed at the hospital. Armed guards had been posted at the door, in case Marcus sent someone after them. "Kirk's—gone and Spock's barely recovered, and they want to parade us around from here to Delta Quadrant so everyone can see the glorious Federation has returned in full swing? As if people will forget that it swooned at the first military dictator to knock on its door."

"And still swooning, I'd bet," Uhura added. "Carol told me they've shut her out of investigations into Genesis—even if she's on the mission, the only reason it'd be out of her jurisdiction now is if they're not shutting it down after all. This mission isn't to get the _Enterprise_ to the far off huddled masses, it's to get us away from them."

"While they figure out a way to rationalize Harrison and Marcus in retrospect," Sulu guessed.

"Can we claim to be any better?" Spock asked from the bed, breathing laboriously but evenly. "Even with our doubts, without Kirk, when would we have acted? We all did what was required of us—we passed the Combat Exam."

"But that was just a test; we didn't _know_ —" Uhura said, and then stopped herself, not looking at Chekov.

"But we know now," he said gently, to show her that he hadn't taken any offense. "And I don't think time away from the Federation is such a bad thing. It's time for us, as well as them. They may have all of the power now, but we have the ship, and time to think—we'll find a way to fight them."

"You really think we can?" Spock asked, measuring even under the film of the drugs.

"I don't know what we can do," Chekov said. For the first time, Spock's gaze didn't make him sit up straighter. "I have a feeling that the only ones who did are dead."

They fell briefly silent under that weight.

It had taken hours before they could remove Kirk's body. Chekov had only seen from a safe distance, behind anti-radioactive panels, but even from there he could see Kirk's body had been mangled with radiation. The ship—the ship he had lived and died for—had swallowed him up and spit him out, stolen that golden spark inside of him and kept it for itself.

The ship was still gold, the holograms flickering but yet to be dismantled. He felt like he saw gold everywhere now—that people had taken it up as a kind of shining mourning.

Chekov had never explained to Kirk, had never heard him explain. That silence would stay with him forever.

And now they were going back into the ship.

Chekov said: "But that's Starfleet, right? Even when you don't know where, you keep going—where no one has gone before."

\+ + +

Three days before the _Enterprise_ was set to take off, Chekov found himself back on the pier by Kirk's house, staring out over the bay.

It was Risan winter now, still warm but less humid. The relentless bugs had finally gone silent, and the occasional rain had cleared the scent of jasmine from the air. Chekov knew they would return, but even so it felt like a part of the planet had died too.

Kirk's house didn't seem the same without him in it, cold and still. Even the play of light from the bay flickering up its ivy-laden walls didn't look the same anymore, now made a mockery of Kirk's face blue in death.

There was so much Chekov had finally figured out, that he would never get to tell Kirk.

He remembered like it was both yesterday and years ago, when he had stood at the bay and known he was on the outside of something so very large, so grand he could barely comprehend its measure. And now he was here, on the inside of it, and he still felt like he didn't belong.

Kirk had found people who were not just the best and brightest in their field, but people who could draw others to them. Each of them could captain a ship, and they would do it in completely different ways. Spock, he knew from experience, drew people in by gaining their respect; he was a role model, a paradigm. Uhura connected to people by understanding exactly how to handle any interaction; she knew almost instantly whether a soft touch or a steely one would do the trick, as instantly as she knew which of her thousands of languages to use. Scotty won people over when he was down in the trenches with them, getting his hands dirty like anyone else. Sulu's magnetism arose from his inscrutability; he was cool in both figurative senses of the word: impossibly chic even at his goofiest, and grim as Triskellion steel when he was angry. 

McCoy made people trust him. As a doctor he needed to, and people extended that trust almost without realizing it: first when they were hurt and bleeding and then later, when they were lost or confused and in need of guidance. And he did it by loving them, in his own gruff, hopelessly giving way that never demanded love in return—and in doing so assured it.

But Harrison could never make anyone love him. Chekov remembered their first meeting: his unapproachable strength, his pointed determination. Chekov feared him and adored him. That was Harrison's gift. He pulled people not so much to him as into his orbit.

How miserable, Chekov thought—a man who loved everyone; a man no one could love. They must have repelled like magnets. How much John must have wanted that love; how desperate McCoy had been to give it.

And Kirk— 

He had appeared from the snowy abyss of exile, with nothing but a broken ship empty except for two half-starved engineers, and he had still convinced Spock and Uhura—two of the most level headed people Chekov had ever known—to abandon their posts, their loyalty to Starfleet, their entire lives up to that point.

Even now when he was dead, and they were still following him.

But Chekov? Chekov was a genius, as he'd known since he was a child—but that rarely made him a leader. He knew some strategy, but only enough to follow another plan. He learned quickly, but usually from others. He was clever with ships, with astrophysics, with any machine he put his hands to, but rarely with people.

Chekov was here because he had killed someone who was in his way.

"Chin up, kid."

He turned, found McCoy walking towards him on the pier. The wind had picked up, cooler now, but McCoy didn't even seem to notice. He was upright, eagle-eyed as he stared into the water, no longer the frail shadow he'd been when Kirk was rolled in. Chekov couldn't understand it—nothing had changed, Kirk was _dead_ , the victory worth nothing without him there to enjoy it. This was just an empty house now, the pier so many planks that led out to the abyss. "How can you say that now?"

McCoy had lost more than anyone. He was the only other person who had loved both of the men who had died.

"We still have the ship," McCoy reminded him gently, "God help me, we have the ship."

"You think that will do anything? That it will 'heal the Federation?'"

"I've only ever claimed to heal people," McCoy said grimly. "And even that doesn't always go my way."

"The ship won't bring him back." 

McCoy turned to him, his expression incongruous. Chekov stared for long seconds before he recognized it: it was the same expression McCoy had made at that first meeting in the cottage, that seemed so long ago now, when he had seen Kirk across the room and had known that he was closer than he had ever been in years, when only seconds ago he had been nothing, as good as dead.

"I am a doctor, you know. I have a few ideas, if you're willing to help."

And McCoy hadn't had Kirk then, like he didn't have him now. But he _knew_ Kirk was there, just in front of him. It was the possibility that made him smile, the knowledge that he was tantalizingly within reach—if McCoy was brave enough. It was wanting.

He was brave enough. Chekov believed it, like Kirk had. That was Kirk's gift: he could make people believe in him, in the future, in themselves. He had known that Scotty could make the Enterprise fly with only a handful of crew, and he had. He had known Sulu could take off planetside, and he had. He had known that Spock could hold John in a fight, and he'd nearly beaten him. And he'd known that Uhura would have saved the data, that Marcus could lure her own father into a trap. He had known Chekov wouldn't shoot him, even after everything else that happened.

He had believed that Bones could save him even after he had died. 

It was the kind of idea that kindled, warm enough to shelter Chekov from the wind. McCoy put his hand on Chekov's shoulder and felt the same warmth in him.

Chekov finally smiled back. "I can do that."


End file.
